


It's Us

by ShadowPorpoise



Series: Underfakers [3]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dreamtale (Undertale), Angst, Brotherly Angst, Brotherly Love, Character Development, Childhood Trauma, Complicated Relationships, Drama, Dysfunctional Family, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, Enemies to Friends, Family Drama, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Healing, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, Killing, Manipulation, No Plot/Plotless, No Romance, No Smut, Not Canon Compliant, POV Third Person, Possession, Present Tense, Self-Defense, Sequel, Sharing a Body, Suicidal Thoughts, Swearing, read the previous 2 parts first, this is part 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:47:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 32
Words: 25,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25267846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowPorpoise/pseuds/ShadowPorpoise
Summary: It’s hard to live with themselves sometimes, let alone each other.Easier to give up, when it’s just you.Sequel toIt's Still YouandIt's Me,so please go back and read those if you haven't already.
Relationships: Blue & Underswap!Papyrus, Dream & Fresh, Dream & Nightmare, Dream & Underswap!Papyrus, Error & Blue, Error & Fresh, Error & Ink, Error & Nightmare, Fresh & Blue, Ink & Fresh, Nightmare & Fresh, Nightmare & Underswap!Papyrus, Sans & Sans (Undertale), dream & blue, ink & dream, nightmare & blue
Series: Underfakers [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1754032
Comments: 40
Kudos: 61





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please read parts 1 and 2 of this series before this one. Thank you.
> 
> Dream!Sans, Nightmare!Sans, and Neil created by JokuBlog  
> Ink!Sans created by Comyet  
> Error!Sans and Fresh!Sans created by CrayonQueen

He sits at the fringes of a starry universe, at the edge of the drop off. Not much goes on here by way of conflict. The inhabitants are too far removed from anything even remotely resembling humanity and so what’s left is an easy sameness, even if that sameness is a shared discontent. It’s amusing, really. In countless alternate dimensions, monsters pine for the stars that were taken from them, a weaponized injustice that provides all necessary stamina for their strivings to see them again. Yet here they have nothing but stars, and still it is not enough.

Perhaps that’s why Dream is here. To sort of balance out the emotions of this place. As though balance were the ultimate goal of any universe, of any life. Ha. There’s only life because there’s no balance, and so the striving continues. And no more intensely than in this golden guardian of positivity, dashing around in perpetual strife with the very nature of every living thing in the multiverse. Because living has nothing to do with balance.

Still, it is fun to watch him try. Which is why Fresh followed him here, to watch from the fringes while he does.

“Hello.”

Fresh doesn’t jump. The fact that Dream managed to sneak up on him isn’t half so surprising as the fact that Fresh let him out of his sight long enough to do it. With one smooth motion he slips his glasses back up his nasal bone and flashes a row of perfect teeth. “Yo.”

“Are you… okay?”

If there’s one thing Fresh is not, it is okay. Which is likely why Dream asked. And why he phrased it that way, waiting to be contradicted. Because people don’t say what they mean, what they think, only whatever best elicits the desired response.

“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you I was, would you little bro?”

Surprisingly, Dream bristles. Apparently he has his limits, too. And they’re astonishingly easy to reach. “Well, I was about to leave.”

Ah. It’s been a long day, has it?

“But I won’t, if…”

Fresh laughs and kicks his legs against the edge. “So that’s it, huh? You done your thing and all ready to call it a day, yeah? Well, little bro…” He wipes at his eyes beneath the lenses and gets to his feet. “I’ll leave you to it, yo. Go on, check it off your list. I won’t get in the way. One entire universe cleaned up and all thanks to you, dog, look at you go.”

It would be funny, Dream’s mouth hanging open like that, if Fresh hadn’t had enough amusement for one day. He doesn’t live here, after all, he doesn’t live anywhere and so what should it matter how he feels? What this soul feels, screaming for help more desperately every minute since Dream noticed them, noticed but didn't hear, that silent agonized cry for freedom. The guardian of positivity wouldn't know a thing about that.

“Nah, man, don’t look like that,” Fresh scolds, turning on squeaky sneaker soles and making a show of walking away. It’s rude to teleport in the middle of a conversation. “I respect you, broski, looking after the emotional climate and all. Just…” He looks over his shoulder once. Dream has made no move to follow him. Interesting. “Just… don’t get cocky,” he says. And then he’s gone.


	2. Chapter 2

“Can I come with?”

Nightmare nearly spits out his hot chocolate. Or, cold. It was in the fridge, leftover from last night. “What, with me?”

Shrug. “Yeah.”

Nightmare never understood the fascination with drinking coffee this early in the morning. Cold hot chocolate, or _chocolate milk,_ as Blue insists on calling it with a wrinkled nose, is way better. Even now the little starry-eyed skeleton is making another one of those faces at him for drinking it. Or maybe that’s not it. Nightmare can’t be bothered this early in the morning, not without coffee.

“It’s in the pot,” Blue tells him, with that slightly unnerving way of guessing at his thoughts.

“Nope.”

He shrugs again. “Suit yourself. Anyway,” he plops down across from him. “Can I come or not?”

Nightmare frowns. Blue has always been a bit clingy, especially this past year. It’s like he’s afraid to let go of them, to lose sight of them for even a moment in case they escape and their new, tentative relationships fade before they can fully form. Nightmare wishes Blue was as careful of his words. And what’s to fade, really - he doesn’t think they’re quite like a family, though perhaps Nightmare’s concept of what makes a family is pretty skewed. He can’t think of a single one that truly deserves the term, come to think of it. He sets down his drink and watches the bubbles at the top, waiting for them to break apart. Food and drink of any kind never fail to hold his interest. It’s only been a year since he really started eating anything, after all. “Why?” He asks finally, when Blue won’t stop staring either, waiting for _him_ to break. And, “Don’t you have to train today?”

Blue falls silent for a long while, sipping his coffee. As if he needs any caffeine. It’s a difficult thing for him, giving up training for even one day. It’s his life’s dream, after all. To join the guard. The Omega Guard, which is more involved in timeline security than anything else. Let him wait till he’s old enough to get in, if he gets in at all, to start hopping worlds. They have strict regulations about that. And Blue has always been good at following the rules.

“It’s my last year,” Blue says finally. His voice is quiet. “Before.”

Before he’s sixteen. Old enough to join, and to be responsible for his actions when he does.

Through the haze of early-morning, coffee-less fatigue, Nightmare picks up on a startlingly uncharacteristic emotion from the other. Blue’s hands are shaking around his mug.

Nightmare can’t help it when his mouth twists. Or maybe he can, and just doesn’t bother. “What do you even wanna do?"

Blue steadies himself and looks the guardian of negativity in the eye, knowing full well that Nightmare can see right into his soul at this moment. He’s always been good at that, at being honest with his own feelings, but something tells Nightmare _this_ feeling has been around for a lot longer than Blue wants to admit, even if he is trying to admit it, now. “I want to see Error,” he says finally, and suddenly there’s nothing funny about this. Nightmare’s smirk sort of freezes in place and the room feels suddenly colder.

“No.”

Blue doesn’t bother to blow on his coffee when next he drinks it. “K.”

For one tiny, isolated moment Nightmare thinks he has won. Then - “You’re not asking Dream.”

Another one of those infuriating shrugs. “Says who?”

“Says me. They don’t even get along that well. It would be disastrous.”

“Guess you’ll have to take me then.”

Nightmare huffs an exasperated sigh and drums his fingers on the table. Blue frowns. “Thought you were gonna stop wearing those.”

The gloves. He has them on again today. Precisely because he is going to see Error, and he doesn't feel like discouraging him right now. The former destroyer designed his cape specifically to match the rest of his outfit, and he's been known to throw a fit over less.

Perhaps Blue knows that too, and that’s why he asked him today. Well, two can play at that game. “What does Pap say?”

Blue’s face hardens. “Didn’t tell him.”

Nightmare winks his blind eye. “Wonder what he’d think if I did.”

“You won’t.”

“Says who?”

“Says me or I’ll…”

Ooh. A threat? This is getting interesting. Nightmare rests his chin lazily on one fist. “What’ll you do?”

Blue’s whole face is twitching. Anger, frustration… and that other feeling. The one that makes his hands shake. Without really realizing it, Nightmare has been stoking his negative emotions like a fire and now he stops, suddenly. Blue catches the look amidst his own relief, and gapes disbelievingly at him from across the table.

“Were you doing that?”

“No.” Beat. “Yes. But I only made it worse, I didn’t - ”

“Seriously? How often do you do that to people?”

“I - that’s not - Dream does it all the time!”

“What, makes people feel so miserable they’ll do what he wants while he laughs about it?”

Nightmare clatters to his feet. This conversation is definitely over. He picks up his glass and puts it in the sink because that’s what you do in a household, with a family or no, and starts for the door.

“Nightmare.”

For some reason, he stops.

Blue sags in the kitchen doorway, looking more exhausted than before he had the coffee. “You owe me,” he says quietly.

Nightmare just stares at him. “I know.” That’s why you can’t come, idiot.

Blue smiles tiredly. He looks like a different Sans, from a different world. From almost any world but his own, which isn’t this one. He looks down, finally, turning those pleading eyes mercifully away from Nightmare. “I just don’t want to be afraid anymore.”

Nightmare’s hand finds the doorknob. “Can I talk to you later?” It’s better. It’s better than what he would have done before. And Blue knows it.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll talk to you later.”


	3. Chapter 3

Error resists the urge to destroy his own needle. That’s the fourth time he’s poked himself with it, and it’s not even noon yet. Not that it’ll ever be noon here, but he can pretend. Pretending isn’t so bad, when you’ve got nothing real to do.

Besides it’s a mess now, anyway. It was supposed to be a hat but the colors are all wrong. It’s an old pattern, one of his first. Something he never quite perfected. And it’s been bothering him for years, that somewhere out there is an imperfect, unfinished project he would have destroyed long ago, if he could find it. Which is why there’s a whole pile of them by his chair now, each one slightly worse than the last.

“Whoa, what’d we say about destroying?”

He jumps, and jabs himself again. “God d-dammit, Noot,” he gasps, and destroys it anyway. His most recent creation dissolves in a cloud of rainbow-colored dust. The satisfaction is short lived.

“Aw, was that for me?”

“Fuck off.” Error sticks his finger in his mouth, like that’ll make it any better. He seriously regrets bringing Nightmare to the antivoid in the first place. But it’s not like he can live in the Toriels’ sewing rooms forever.

Nightmare sighs and sits down, crosslegged, in the space before him. Something he probably picked up from Ink. Or his brother, who picked it up from Ink. Everyone is acting like Ink these days. “Come on. When you gonna make me a beanbag?”

“N-Never.”

It’s a little unusual, for Nightmare to carry on pestering him for this long. He’s been even a bit too careful, lately, in fact. Ever since Error started making things again. Making them, and not unmaking them after. He still doesn’t know where Nightmare takes them, and he doesn’t want to know. He often wakes up at night in a panic, remembering some minuscule flaw he hadn’t fixed yet, in whatever he made last. If he knew where it was, he’d have to go looking before it caused any more damage. So Nightmare doesn’t tell him. And doesn’t usually jab at him either, about what he makes.

“Wh-what’s the matter with you?” he demands, still biting his own finger and glaring at anything but him.

“Lots of things,” Nightmare quips, and takes a hat off the pile.

“I noticed. Put the f-fucking hat back.”

“In a sec.” And he puts it on. With the bill in front. “What do you think?”

Error’s eye twitches. “Put your hood back on. ”

Nightmare grins.

“No, n-not over the - ”

“I’m totally keeping this one.”

“ _N-No_ , you’re not. God!” Error shoots a couple of reflexive strings at him, which he doesn’t bother to dodge.

“Error,” he says, sounding suddenly serious, as the cap dissolves into nothing around his head. “I thought you were trying not to do that.”

“I th-thought _you_ were trying not to piss me off.”

“You’re supposed to make each one better, not - ”

“Y-Yeah well it doesn’t always work that way.”

They fall into sudden, sober silence. They both know it’s true.

Error starts sewing again. “So…” he blips after a while, when Nightmare makes no move to get up. “Wanna talk about it?”

A shrug, and that cynical half-smile of his. “It’s nothing new. Just… conflict at home.”

“Home, huh?” Error glances at him, unable to hide that brief pang interest. And, “They still worried I’m gonna d-destroy that place?” by way of changing the subject before Nightmare can notice.

“You had them pretty convinced.” But he’s got that distant look in his eyes that means he’s somewhere far away, in his mind, and very little can draw him back. It only takes a word, or a phrase, to set him off sometimes. And Error is still learning how to avoid it. “But with you gone they’re mostly worried about that other thing. The… parasite, I think.”

“Symbiont.” The word is out before he can stop it.

Nightmare blinks, coming back to himself just like that. Error would make a mental note of it if he any intention of ever saying it again. “What?”

“N-Never mind.”

“Ok.” Nightmare gets up, finally, but doesn’t try to take the hats with him. “I guess I’ll just… go. For now. You good?”

Error isn’t sure about that. But it doesn’t matter just now. “Yep. And, N-Nightmare?”

“Yeah?”

“Just… d-do better next time. Right?”

Nightmare seems unsure whether that’s sarcasm or not. Error isn’t sure, either. “I will,” he says finally, and turns to go.


	4. Chapter 4

He’s with Fresh again. It’s become a normal thing, now. He goes out, to do his job. And inevitably Fresh ends up _being_ his job, when the silence drowns out everything else. Dream can’t feel negative emotions, but he does notice the complete absence of positives, when its standing right in front of him. It’s different than being with Ink, who seems to feel everything at once. Fresh feels nothing, or else nothing good, and Dream can’t quite figure out why. It reminds him of Nightmare when he’s in one of his moods. But Fresh isn’t Nightmare, and so Dream has to help him. It’s his job to help him, unlike Nightmare, who takes great pains to remind Dream that he can take care of himself.

“Where’d you get your hat?” Dream asks for lack of anything better to say. It looks familiar to him, somehow.

Fresh just stares at him, or seems to. Dream can’t tell what he’s looking at, behind those glasses. This is the first time he’s ever tried Grillby’s, and he’s not sure that he likes it. Fresh seemed to find it amusing, the way he squinted at the menu like he couldn’t understand half the words. SRS LY? His lenses spell out now, and Dream nods. “You know some peeps don’t wanna be fixed?” He says instead of answering, and Dream braces himself for yet another monologue. He’s been putting up with them in the hopes of learning more about his new companion, but usually it just leaves him even more confused. “For reals, yo, you look around and tell me how many of these peeps want your help before you offer, and how you always at an uphill slant when they do?”

Dream sighs and doesn’t bother to look. Most of them are half passed out at the bar anyway. “I don’t want to talk about that anymore, Fresh.”

“Right, gotta fix me first, yo, gotta put the lid on that thing before it spreads, yeah?”

Not for the first time, Dream is at a loss. “I don’t know what you mean. Can we go now?”

“What you asking me permission for, dog, you got ways of going wherever you want, don’t you?” But that’s not what he means and Fresh knows it. He knows he’s been following him all over the place, and getting in the way, or at least distracting him. Dream scoots his plate further onto the table and slides out of the booth. Fresh follows him outside. It’s dark. No moon. It’s a pacifist timeline, with a fairly peaceable, if segregated, community of monsters near the edge of town. He’s been choosing easy worlds, if he’s honest. He doesn’t have the stomach for much else, not with Fresh following him around, waiting for him to fail.

It feels awkward, just leaving him here outside Grillby’s. He never seems to have anywhere to go. “Where’s your home world?” Dream asks him now, with a sudden thought.

“Where’s yours?” he returns with a somewhat sardonic smile, but Dream just shrugs.

“Omega. It’s for people without one.”

Fresh smirks. “Ink still ferrying people over there?”

Dream blinks. “You know Ink?”

But Fresh is looking away, down the street. There are a couple of humans, walking in this direction. “Think you better go home, little bro,” and there’s something in his voice Dream doesn’t like.

“Why?”

“Cause… I’m about to do _my_ thing, know what I’m saying?”

He doesn’t. But Dream isn’t rude. So he goes.


	5. Chapter 5

“Fresh?” Ink glances up from where he’s just been going over some old sketches. He’s still got a pencil in his mouth and Dream thinks this is the first time he’s had his full attention in a while.

“Yeah. He’s been… hanging out. With me.”

Frown. Ink turns back to his sketchbook but he doesn’t turn the page.

The Doodle Sphere doesn’t tell time. Which is why Dream can get away with being here, when it’s night back home. They’ll be looking for him, but he has been better about that lately. He can afford a mistake or two.

“Think they’re on the lookout for him in Omega, aren’t they?”

“I… don’t know. Why?”

Another one of those looks. Then - “Stay away from him.”

Ink is indifferent, at best, to what Dream does most of the time. The only reason they’re ever at odds is precisely because he can be so apathetic regarding individuals and their lives. As long as the story continues, and no matter what _kind_ of story it happens to be, he’s perfectly satisfied to let it go on. Which is why Dream is usually left to worry about most of the important stuff himself.

“Why aren’t you in bed?” The artist asks then, as though to solidify this new level of concern, and Dream finds himself strangely on the verge of exhausted tears.

“I… couldn’t get anything done today,” he manages without letting them spill, and Ink sets the notebook down entirely.

“Come here,” he says, and turns slightly where he’s seated crosslegged in the grass. Dream is a at a loss for what to do if not comply, and Ink slaps an unceremonious hand to his forehead when he does.

“Ow…”

“You’re sick. Go home.” And he’s picked up the notebook again. “I’ll take care of it.”

“You… Wait, what?”

“Your problem. With Fresh. Now go home.”

Dream has never been directly kicked out of the Doodle Sphere before. He feels a little sorry for himself, which is perhaps why he teleports into the living room instead of his bedroom. Blue takes one look at him from the kitchen doorway and says, “Go to bed.” He’s got a dish towel in his hands.

“In a minute,” Dream returns stubbornly, and looks at Papyrus where he’s watching TV on the couch. The volume is down. Blue doesn’t like the noise. And for some reason, Dream is strangely grateful.

“Hey, kiddo,” Papyrus greets lazily, and Dream finds himself increasingly agitated. There’s a pressure in his face and behind his eyes.

“Dream.” It’s Blue again, in the doorway. “Go to bed. I’ll make tea and bring it.”

And so Dream starts to go, like he always goes, like he always does whatever anyone tells him or suggests like an obedient pet dog. Because it’s not enough he listens to their feelings all day, he’s gotta listen to their words too, the way they never listen to any of his.

“What’s going on?” And only Nightmare would ask that, as soon as he’s materialized behind him with a pop, because no one else can tell something is wrong besides Nightmare, not if Dream doesn’t spell it out for them and he doesn’t feel like it, he doesn’t feel like a lot of things and one of them is listening while other people talk, about their own problems and why he shouldn’t have any.

So, “Nothing,” he says, in a voice as garbled as his emotions, and Blue is in the doorway again with an empty teakettle. Watching. They’re all watching because he’s made a fuss, he’s drawn attention to himself when there’s nothing wrong, when there’s never anything wrong with him and so he shouldn’t.

“Hey.” And Nightmare has one hand on his arm.

“I’m not a _puppy_ ,” Dream snaps and shrugs him off, and now it really is too late, he’s tipped his hand but he can’t go or he’ll have done the wrong thing again, and whatever he thought earlier he can’t afford another mistake, not when Fresh is waiting on the other side to laugh about it.

He does his best not to slam the bedroom door behind him. It’s not only his room, after all. It’s not his room at all, really, he’s only using it in an attempt to be normal, to look normal just like he always does.

“He’s just sick,” says Blue from the other side, and yeah, that’s right, he’s sick, he’s sick and tired of pretending he’s not sick, that’s he’s ever been anything but sick, in the head anyway.

“Did you say something to him?”

“No, I just told him to go to bed. What’s that even mean?”

And now they’re fighting. They’re fighting because Dream didn’t do his job, didn’t make them happy like he’s supposed to and now they’re not, now they’re not like he isn’t.

“Alright, guys, settle down. I think we’re all just tired. Blue, make the tea, but then I think you should give him his space.”

“He doesn’t want any tea.” And thank god Nightmare said that or so help him Dream was going to bolt the door. He flops down on his stomach in the bottom bunk and buries his face in his arms, trying to drown out the sounds. Oh, the sounds.

“ - No, I’m saying he’s _upset,_ Blue, would you let me handle this?”

And no, no, Dream doesn’t want anyone to handle it. _He_ doesn’t want to handle it. He just wants to sleep but he can’t with all the _noise_.

He can only pretend to, like he always does, when the door opens.


	6. Chapter 6

“Nice hats,” he says. Like he’s never seen one before. And Error curses himself for leaving them out.

“Oh, y-yeah that’s just a… s-side project I was w-working on. Whatever.” And he dusts them all in one shot.

“Error.” Ink looks about ready to laugh. Or get sick. Probably both. 

Error frowns. On second thought, that was probably overkill, though it’s too late now. It’s always too late once he lets fly those strings. But not to go somewhere else, before Ink pukes in the anti void. “Wh-Why’d you even come?” he asks when they’ve left, and landed somewhere populated, and colorful.

Ink shrugs, and leans on one of those rock and cement walls that always chips apart before it’s of any use to anyone, if it was ever going to be in the first place. It’s a gaudy place, this world, all orangish swirls and reddened earth. It appeared during that time Error was almost wholly preoccupied with Flowey, with enjoying just one world instead of destroying all the others. Ink helped to make it but he doesn’t seem particularly fond. It’s a mindlessly backwards place, where monsters were never sent underground to begin with and there are no conflicts of any kind related to the differences in species. Even so, no one here seems particularly happy. Or sad either. No one seems to feel anything particular at all, and maybe that’s why he made it, how he managed to make it so quickly, disappointing not only the creator who came up with it, but also himself, when he butchered their story, overran their feelings with his own, or lack of them.

But Ink never gives up on anything he makes. Only lets it carry on, in passive possession of a value only it can have, a place only it can fill in the universe. Whereas Error can’t help but notice, all the accidents he could avert before they happen, the mistakes he can correct before they’re made. Things are never too far gone, to be _fixed_ , to be _corrected_ and redone, not left to fester in their own inadequacy. Problem is, he’s always been stuck, on the averting part. The destroying part, and never actually got down to redoing, or correcting.

Correcting is hard.

“Wanna walk?”

Ink nods and falls into step beside him on the orange pavement. It glitters in the perpetual daylight, and beside them pass a couple of human kids with nicecream cones. Neither gives the skeletons a second look.

“It’s nice,” Error lies, so that Ink grimaces at him. And then, “So… wh-what’s up?”

Shrug. “I don’t know. I’m just bored, mostly.”

Ink and boredom never mix well. And he has precious little to hold his attention, since Error stopped sabotaging his creations. _Error_ has had precious little to hold _his_ attention, since he stopped sabotaging Ink’s creations. “Just… m-make something else,” he mutters before he can stop himself and Ink casts a wary glance in his direction. His eyes have gone that blank, almost-white color they do when he hasn’t decided how to feel.

They fall silent for a while, just walking, and Error figures he ought to save the conversation since he’s the one who ruined it to begin with. Maybe he can redo that much. “S-So did you hear about Fr - ”

“Yep.”

“Oh.” And that probably wasn’t the right thing to say after all, but at least Ink’s talking. Or, was. Eagerly enough to cut him off, anyway. “You, uh… Y-you gonna do anything about it?”

“Wasn’t planning on it. Till he started harassing Dream.”

“Dream?”

Ink doesn’t bother with confirming. He’s always been like that. He knows when Erorr’s heard him and he dislikes repeating himself when Error’s _playing dumb_ , as he calls it. Never mind that most of what he says is so fucking nonsensical you’ve gotta hear it twice to believe it.

“K-Kid can handle that stuff himself, right? It’s his j-job.”

“Yeah, well - ” Ink starts but cuts off again. Stops. Half leans, half sits on the wall and Error joins him. There’s a little park across the way. Some kids are playing tag. “I don’t really know what… my job is, anymore,” he gets out finally, and Error finds himself inordinately annoyed.

“Th-thought you had it all laid out f-for you. What’s the p-problem? Just… Just…”

Ink is looking at him. Waiting. For instruction? Error can’t help but sneer.

“L-Look if you don’t know what to do with yourself, d-don’t come c-crying to me. You think I l-like sitting around like some fucking watchdog and waiting for you to f-find something I’m _allowed_ to destroy?” Empty, genocide timelines and floating debris. Whatever people _won’t_ miss, _won’t_ notice if it’s gone.

“No.” Ink looks away, back the way they’ve come. A horn blares, followed by a vacant shout. There’s quite a bit of traffic, crowding along the distant intersection. Error watches Ink watch them, those inconsequential cars still moving along their inconsequential street, and much to his horror he realizes there are tears rising steadily in Ink’s eye-sockets.

Shit. He’d forgotten how raw they’ve become now, Ink’s feelings. The ones he’s only just started to take ownership for, to call his own even as they own him, and not only when he remembers to let them, anymore.

“Uh…” Error coughs. “L-Look, if you’re so w-worried about Dream, why don’t you let me talk to him? I h-haven’t had a good f-fight in a while.” He grins halfheartedly and Ink blinks at him, bewildered. A couple of tears have made their way down his cheeks.

“Dream?”

Frown. “N-no, of course not _Dream_.”

Ink turns away. “I don’t think so.”

“Ok.” He won’t press it, with something like this. “Well, do _you_ … wanna fight?”

Ink snorts.

“N-No, really.”

Ink sighs and gets up. Starts walking again, and Error follows him. “No. I don’t want to do that,” he says.


	7. Chapter 7

It’s quiet when Nightmare enters the bedroom. Too quiet. But Dream’s emotions are clearly not yet muted in sleep, and perhaps he realizes this because after a moment he lets out a loud, telltale sniff that’s almost more of a hiccup, and the little ball of blankets at one end of his bed gets a bit smaller.

Nightmare heaves himself up onto the top bunk, though he has no intention of sleeping, and takes a moment to consider, to digest what Dream is feeling rather than reacting, than sensing and attempting to correct it all at once.

As usual, there’s more there of guilt than anything else. Ever since they were little, Dream has felt guilty. He thinks he’s responsible for the happiness of others, and when that happiness inevitably fluctuates, he views it as a personal failure. It’s his predisposition, to feel guilty. And that makes _Nightmare_ feel guilty, for being the cause of it more often than not, and in more ways that one. He’s tried to regulate it, to help Dream the way Dream always tried and failed to help him, the way he won’t _let_ Dream help him or he’ll bleed himself dry. It’s in their nature, to remain untouched by one another’s efforts, and to keep making those efforts in spite of it.

And so Nightmare does make the effort with renewed vigor, when amidst the usual guilt and general surliness he picks up on a new feeling, one he’s never felt from Dream before: despair.

For as long as he can remember, Dream has looked for the good, for the hope in every situation. It’s worn him to exhaustion, this striving after a positive outcome, regardless of the circumstance. Dream _is_ the hope of the entire multiverse, and no matter what Nightmare might do, no matter what motivations he might have, that is something he can never be, in perception or reality.

To say he is jealous would be an understatement.

Still, over time he has begun to take ownership of _his_ role, even if Dream is the only one who truly sees the value in it, who once again finds the good in something where no one else can. Not that Dream entirely understands what he does, or doesn’t do. He simply respects him for it, and leaves him to it. And, whatever Blue might think, whatever anyone might think, Nightmare is good for more than just summoning negative feelings.

He sets about smothering them, to drawing them out and, as expected, Dream only cries harder at first because it hurts, it always hurts when they express their way out of your soul. He’s full on silent sobbing now, with only snatches of strangled breath here and there to betray him. But before Nightmare can make any real progress, “Please don’t,” he begs, in a voice all choked with fever and his own emotions.

Nightmare stops.

Another couple of sniffs from below, and then - “I kn-know you’re trying to h-help me but please just… don’t.”

And it’s only fair, since Nightmare hasn’t let Dream try to help him in ages. There’s an unspoken rule between them, not to use their abilities on each other, on _family_ , when they are unwelcome. It’s their own business, how they choose to do their work, but they both know there’s a fine line between what they call _work_ and what is, in fact, manipulation. And this is the best method to avoid crossing it with each other, the way Nightmare did with Blue before.

“Do you think of them as family?” he asks suddenly, and Dream sniffs again.

“Who? Papyrus… and Blue?”

“Yeah.” Nightmare studies the ceiling, since he’s not allowed to focus on Dream, right now. And Dream is quiet for so long that Nightmare gives up on getting an answer. “It doesn’t matter,” he amends after a while. “I just wondered.”

“I told them I do,” says Dream, sounding surprisingly steady for a moment. “But… B-But maybe I d- _don’t_ ,” and he’s not even bothering to keep quiet anymore, he’s straight out sobbing now and there’s no way the others can’t hear.

Nightmare doesn’t say anything.

“I’m n-no good to a-anybody,” Dream gasps when he can speak, and Nightmare doesn’t need to laugh for Dream to hear it, to sense that bitter, fond amusement. “Wh-What’s so funny?” he demands angrily, and Nightmare just sighs and closes his eyes.

“I don’t know, you I guess.”

Dream doesn’t bother to answer. Just lies there gasping a bit longer before he asks, “Is it true you… y-you spend more time sm-smothering emotions than you do m-making them?”

“You what now?” It’s the first time Dream has flat out asked about his job. And he can’t quite pinpoint the implication of his question, though he knows it can’t be anything good.

“S-Somebody told m-me you d-dont even need to c-create negativity ‘cause it’s already there and it’s so b-bad _even you can’t get rid of it._ ” The last words come out on another wave of desperate sobbing and Nightmare just gapes into the darkness, stunned. It’s true he does quite a bit of smothering, or drawing it out like he just tried to do with Dream. But if anything that’s harder, than building it up where it needs to be, and he never thought of it as an advantage.

“Who told you that?”

“So it is t-true.” Bitterly triumphant. There’s nothing positive about that.

“Yeah it’s true but it’s not that big a deal, Dream, people are pretty messed up usually, you know that.”

Dream falls silent again. Slowly, his seething emotions are beginning to settle down into a more innocuous simmer. “Ink told me to go home,” he whispers at last. Sounding a bit more like himself as he finally gets around to what’s actually bothering him.

“Come on, Dream, you know he doesn’t mean anything by it.”

“I was sick, so go home, he said.”

“Honestly? That sounds more like he was concerned than dismissive.” Nightmare is surprised. Dream doesn’t usually misinterpret positive expressions.

“I suppose.” Dream is getting sleepy. The long, drowsy pauses between replies. The steady muddling of his emotions. The guilt is back, now the rest have subsided. “Sorry… I made you sad.” When we were younger, and I left you. When we were older, and I fought you. When you were older, and I killed-

“You never make me sad, bro.” An endless cycle, of incurable guilt and futile reassurances.

“…Really?”

“Yeah, I love you.”

“Oh. Okay.” He’s out like a light before he says it, and Nightmare isn’t sure if he’ll remember.

There was a myth, back in the village, that Dream couldn’t have nightmares. It’s not true of course, his own negativity follows him in sleep just the same as anyone else’s. Especially when he’s sick. Nightmare can feel it pulsing even in his weakened, unconscious state. Still, Nightmare doesn’t stop it. Dream asked him not to. And they always honor those kinds of requests, with each other.

Besides, Nightmare doesn’t mind. He’ll be there when he wakes up.


	8. Chapter 8

Somewhere inside him is the burning desire to create. With or without his emotions, with or without _their_ emotions, it remains. The evidence of a self, the testimony of a _being_ deep beneath whatever arbitrary laws define a soul. _He_ is there, still, this desire born from a life of abandonment, a life _he_ abandoned. And now he lives vicariously through the completed works of others, through completing the works of others, basking in that wholeness even in pain, even in darkness when it comes, when it wins because darkness often comes, often wins in real life, and that’s what creating is all about. Not depicting things the way you wish they were, the way you want them to be but as they are, as they truly become when left to themselves.

And that’s why Ink does leave them to themselves, lets them grow and fluctuate and _change_ because change is natural, change is good and normal and real and letting things change isn’t the same as abandoning, isn’t anything like letting them go to stagnate into nothing the way he did.

“Is that what you tell yourself?”

He whirls and there’s nothing, there’s no one, no shiny teeth and liquid lenses, purple claws and fear fear fear. There is no heart to pound, no soul to tremble, no knowing voice to echo in that emptiness.

“Ink?”

And he spins again, too fast and falls, heavily, on the ground he managed to make all by himself, and hard enough to hurt.

“Whoa.” A flash of yellow teeth. “Wh-Who were you expecting?” Error stupidly holds out a hand that Ink doesn’t take. He focuses on breathing, on _calming_ _down_ and gets up on his own.

“Wh-Where were you going?”

“Just… out.” Somewhere. Somewhere that’s not here.

He can’t make things, alone. Not animate things. Not _meaningful_ things. Just places, still and isolated from the others. Empty, and unchanging. Which is why he only made one. One place that is his own, that reflects his self and no one else’s. After all, he has plenty of people to make things for him, that let him make things for them. He doesn’t need anything else.

Purple. In his eyes and in his head. He’s afraid, and Error knows it. The glitch looks down at the ground, sticks his hands in his pockets. “R-Running away?” he asks, and he’s not wrong. He’s not wrong but he’s so so aggravating.

“He can’t come here.” Ink practically spits the words, and they’re more for his own benefit than anyone else’s.

Error looks up and his face softens, so that he almost looks like a Sans again. “Still?”

After all, _he’s_ here. Error’s here, and all because Ink let him. All because Ink _forgave_ him and what sense does that make? What sense does any of this make.

Error sighs. “Ink, y-you - ”

“Where’s he been all this time, Error? Where’s he been?” The words come raw and desperate and Error closes his mouth in a hard line. Looks back at him helplessly.

“I don’t know.”

Well, why not? Why the fuck not? “I thought… I thought…”

“Well I didn’t. And I don’t know. If I knew I’d t-tell you. Really.”

Ink can read the truth in his eyes. There are no more lies between them now. Only silences, where there should be words.

"I d-do know… where he is now. If you w-want.” The suggestion is tentative. But Ink doesn’t accept it.

“I can find him by myself.”

Error nods. It’s to be expected. But - “W-Will you?”

He will. Just not now. In a minute. When he’s not such a mess of emotions he shouldn’t have. Funny, how things change.

Error waits with him. But he doesn’t go with him, when he finally does decide to. Only watches, quietly. Almost meekly, as he gets up to leave. Ink doesn’t look at him.

Fresh is in some alley in Horrortale. Leaning against the wall like he’s waiting, too. Big chunk missing from his head underneath that insufferable hat. Rainbow jacket overtop a bloodstained shirt. UN RAD plastered against desperate eyes over a shit eating grin.

“Hey, dad," he says.


	9. Chapter 9

The smell of smoke in the morning. Nightmare goes outside.

“You’re up early,” he observes.

Papyrus doesn’t grin at him so much as some secret thought in his own head. Turnabout’s fair play. “And you’re making smalltalk,” he remarks snidely and drags on his cigarette. He’s sitting on the porch step. Blue won’t let him smoke in the house.

“It’s a morning of firsts,” says Nightmare.

Snort. “Hardly.” He turns, and pats the step beside him. “So, uh… level with me, will you? And sit down. Been a while since we talked.”

More like it’s been years since they talked, that is, _really_ talked. Papyrus was one of the few who would actually play chess wth him, before, and win. And sometimes he’d sneak in a little real conversation in the process. Nightmare knew what he was up to, of course, but he didn’t care at the time. He didn’t care about a lot of things at the time.

“No promises,” he sighs now, and eases down beside him.

“Fair.” Papyrus gestures with his cigarette, in the general direction of the universe. “So how’s the whole… negative feeling regulation thing work?”

Nightmare eyes him cautiously without turning his head. Papyrus doesn’t turn his either. He’s staring with almost mock puzzlement at the street before them, and frowning like a dipshit.

“You want the nice version or…?”

“Nah, bro, give it to me straight.”

Bro. He has a way of saying it so you wouldn’t even notice it if you weren’t Nightmare. Nightmare notices everything, like that. And Papyrus knows he notices, and says it anyway. He’s supposed to notice.

Nightmare takes a breath. Holds it while he thinks. Then - “People… suck.” It wasn’t exactly what he intended, but it’s good enough for now, and it earns a barked laugh from the other.

“Yeah. And?”

“And… they don’t feel bad when they should and they do feel bad when they shouldn’t and basically I come along and correct that.”

Papyrus falls silent for a while. Nightmare watches the little trail of smoke floating up into the sky. “Don’t feel bad when they should, huh?”

“Yeah, like - ” He’s flushed now. The beginnings of a panic. He doesn’t understand, of course he doesn’t understand, nobody does and that’s why they don’t understand _him_ , why they don’t _like_ him and he shouldn’t have said anything, he should’ve lied and kept his head down for Dream’s sake if no one else’s, since Dream wants him to stay here, Nightmare is supposed to stay here at least until they’re older and they can get out, he can get out without leaving Dream behind.

He starts violently at the touch of a hand on his shoulder, turning a blank, unseeing gaze onto the other.

“Whoa. Take it easy.”

His breath comes quick and shallow as Papyrus’ face swims into view. He’s saying something, something that makes no sense. “…Like when they hurt you, and they laugh. That about what you mean?”

“Yeah.” Dry. Brittle. His voice, from a long ways away. He closes his eyes. “That’s what I mean.”

A low whistle as his head stops pounding. A cautious hand at his back. The twisting of a cigarette, down into the pavement. “Don’t want you to feel like you can’t talk about that stuff here.”

He can’t talk about it anywhere. Slowly, he rests his head down in his hands. He can’t stop shaking.

Papyrus doesn’t change his tone. “So basically what you’re telling me is people gotta feel worse before they feel better.”

Nightmare makes an indistinct noise. He’s so tired.

He can feel it when Papyrus looks at him. “You know,” he says conversationally, “Blue… he tends to mother everything that moves.”

Nightmare huffs an almost laugh in response.

“And I know he’s a bit… overbearing. But, uh… he loves Dream.”

“Everyone loves Dream.”

Silence. Heavy, and painful. Nightmare hates himself.

“Uh…huh. Well… That’s as may be. Point is, me and you are the big brothers. Feel like we gotta look after the others. Right?”

Nightmare doesn’t move.

“But, I think… Blue is about the last one you need to worry about, that way.”

“Wasn’t worried.”

“Whatever you wanna call it. Being told he can’t even talk to him is a bit… harsh.”

“I didn’t tell him he couldn’t talk to him.”

“Well, actually, you did.”

Nightmare doesn’t feel like arguing. He sits up, and rubs at his own arms. “Yeah, well… Sometimes I don’t feel like we’re a family so much as a bunch of people who live in the same house.” The words come in a rush. Papyrus told him to talk, so he’s talking. He’s talking.

“Ok.” Papyrus looks away, up the street. “That’s a thought. I get it.”

Nightmare shifts, and gets to his feet. “Uhm… I have to go see if he’s awake.”

“Did you sleep?”

He stops at the door. But Papyrus hasn’t turned. “No,” he says. And waits.

“Shame.” He lights up another cigarette.


	10. Chapter 10

Ink wants to say something. It’s churning in his stomach, burning in his chest, waiting on the tip of his tongue like some feeling he hasn’t found yet, some mix he hasn’t made yet and can’t read. Ink has never been very good with feelings, especially his own. So, “Error's been worried about you,” he says.

The look Fresh gives him then - like he’s nothing, and only because he chose to be. “He has, huh?”

“Yeah he won’t stop… asking…” The only time Ink babbles. When he doesn’t need to speak at all.

Fresh smirks and ducks his head, keeping those diabolical glasses in place with one small, bony index finger. It’s not fair, that he gets to hide.

“So… what are you doing? Here.”

The almost imperceptible shake of his head. They won’t be discussing that today. “You’re here about Dream, yeah?”

Ink tries not to be relieved. That the only one who can guess at his thoughts, did. He’d been relieved, too, when Dream couldn’t. When he wasn’t a reflection, a shadow of Ink’s emptiness thrown across the unwitting multiverse.

Said shadow snickers. “Wonder what he’d think. About your little goof.”

No, Dream likes me, Dream is my friend no matter what, no matter what, he said.

“What, you think it’s unconditional, yo, that it doesn’t matter what you do ‘cause you’re family,yeah?” Fresh grins. “Funny. That’s what I thought.”

Ink’s face hardens. “We’re not family.” Dream. You.

Beat. “Nah, Dream’s a nice kid,” Fresh resumes loudly, and pushes himself off from the wall. Ink backs up despite himself. Despite Fresh. Despite the both of them posing no danger, and every threat, to the other. “Got no intention of messing that up. Just wanted to see, you know… What’s so great about him.” Snap. “And then I was like, oh, right, he’s nothing like you!”

Ink stops moving. So does Fresh, once he’s an uncomfortable couple of inches from his face, and almost looming. He’s taller, in this form. “Must be easy, to get along with somebody like that.”

“Not really.”

It’s not wholly unexpected, when Fresh hits him. Or that Ink doesn’t even flinch when he does. Just gazes stonily back into that borrowed, no, that _stolen_ face, while his left eye alone smarts and weeps. Fresh draws back and turns, lifting one arm in a blind, almost wave.

“Welp. Tell Error I said hi.”


	11. Chapter 11

His cloak. Folded neatly, and draped over one arm like he’s getting ready to put it away, if there was an away to put it. “Sorry. It was just so hot.” Dark circles, under his eyes.

Nightmare half laughs. “What are you apologizing for.” He hasn’t seen Dream without that thing on in… ever. He looks so small without it. Gently, and with some difficulty Nightmare takes it from him. “Easy. I’m not gonna wash it.” It doesn’t need washing. Made from pure sunlight. Nightmare looks at it. Puts it down, in the bedroom, and comes back out. “We’ll just keep it in there for now.”

Dream searches his face. “Thank you,” he says finally.

Nightmare just shrugs. “Nevermind,” he says, and puts a hand to Dream’s forehead. “You said you’re still hot though?”

“Just means his fever broke.” Blue. On the stairs. Sweats. A long sleeved T. No battle gear in sight.

Nightmare frowns. “What sense does that make?”

Blue shrugs, and comes the rest of the way down. “Biological sense, I guess. What, you didn’t know that?”

Nightmare shakes his head. They don’t have a lot of experience with being sick. One time Nightmare thought he was, but he didn’t tell anyone.

Guilt. Dream is trying to hug Blue with a somber, intent look on his face, and Blue laughs. “Hey, gonna make me sick too?” And reaches past him to pull Nightmare in as well.

He doesn’t remember if he hugged back when he gets free. Probably not. He’s got his hands clenched tightly around his own arms. Blue doesn’t seem to notice. “You wanna eat something?” he asks. And he really means if they want to. Dream and Nightmare don’t need to eat, per se. But it does help, when they haven’t slept. Or if they’ve been sick, presumably. Besides, they learned pretty quickly that eating is a social necessity.

Breakfast is cereal and toast. Papyrus comes in about halfway through and sits down too. “How you feeling, bud?” he asks casually, and reaches for the box.

“Hot,” says Dream, and Papyrus nods knowingly.

“That’s a good sign.”

Nightmare rolls his eyes.

“So who’s been bothering you, anyway?” Papyrus pours the last of the milk into his bowl.

Dream looks at Nightmare, who in turn looks at Papyrus.

“I mean, you said somebody’s been giving you a hard time, right?”

Yep. He heard the whole fucking conversation.

Dream looks uncomfortable. “Well… not really. It’s just… Somebody… who’s curious. I guess.”

“Yeah? What’s his name?”

“Uhm… Fresh.”

A sudden coughing fit from Blue’s side of the table. Papyrus slaps him on the back, a little too hard to be helpful. Nightmare frowns. “Isn’t that that…”

“Parasite,” wheezes Blue and shakes his head, giving Dream an earnest, beseeching look from across the table. “Stay away from him, Dream, he’s seriously dangerous.”

Dream’s hands are folded in his lap. His cereal is soggy. “Yeah, well, that’s kinda what Ink said so I - ”

“Ink did?” Nightmare is trying to keep calm.

“Yeah, so?” Dream looks about ready to pass out. “Can we not talk about this please,” he breathes, and puts his head down on the table.

“What, exactly, does he do?” Nightmare asks, turning to the others. “I mean, Omega’s looking for him right?”

“Well, they’re talking about it anyway. More like they’re on the alert, if he tries to get in. At this point he can’t, but you never know.” Papyrus is getting Dream a glass of water. “He’s not _destroying_ AUs like a certain somebody.” He eyes Nightmare meaningfully and pats Dream a couple of times to get him up, pressing the glass into his hands. “Still,” he adds, sitting down again, “He’s pretty much hopping from world to world, and wreaking havoc. He’s what you’d call a…”

“Vigilante,” says Blue matter-of-factly, and takes a bite of toast. “Humans mostly, but sometimes other monsters. Kept dying, earlier in the year. It was always a Sans. Remember, Papy?”

“Yeah, they had some of them locked up for a while, maybe Outer?”

“No, not Outer. He was later.”

“Right.”

There’s a loud sniff from Dream’s direction. He’s wiping at his eyes and drinking his water.

“Nobody’s implying it’s your fault, Dream,” Papyrus tells him. Fat lot of good it’ll do though. Everything is Dream’s fault, in his mind. “Anyway. He doesn’t destroy AUs like Error did but he’s been significantly altering one timeline after another, and for the better, he seems to think.”

“That’s awful.” Dream’s face is a blotchy golden mess. Nightmare reaches for his hand.

“Yeah, well… Don’t worry about it, Dream. Just stay here today, and I can - ”

“Don’t tell me you’re gonna take care of it, Night.”

Nightmare blinks. That is exactly what he was going to say.

Dream isn’t looking at him. “I’m going to work.”

Silence. Nightmare resists looking at the others for support. “Uhm… I really think you should stay home today.”

“You can’t tell me what to do.”

Okay. That’s a bit of a leap. “…I’m not. I’m suggesting.”

“Well stop suggesting. Stop making me feel guilty all the time.”

Nightmare feels like he’s been slapped. But Nightmare doesn’t cry, in situations like these. He gets angry. “Not like anybody needs to,” he mutters, and Dream snaps.

“Shut up. You don’t know anything about how I feel.”

The absurdity of that statement hangs between them like an out of place joke.

Dream is the first to snort. But the laugh only turns into more tears.

“Okay,” says Blue, and gets up to start clearing the dishes.

“Hey Blue,” says Papyrus, handing Dream the tissues like it’s nothing. “How come no battle gear?”

“Oh, I’m going with Nightmare today.”

“What?” Nightmare is torn between dealing with Dream and this unexpected announcement.

“Yeah, remember?” Blue glares at him and Nightmare shuts his mouth.

“All the more reason to wear your battle gear,” Papyrus mutters, but his eyes look far away. “It’s just a day trip, right Blue? Part of your training, you said.”

“Mhm.” Blue is running water in the sink.

“Uh-huh. So, uh… hey. There wouldn’t be any plans to maybe, _take care_ of Fresh while you’re out today, would there, Night?”

“Are you serious?”

Dream starts coughing.

“Oh my god.” Nightmare puts his head in his hands.

And the day isn’t even started yet.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Double update! Sorry for the wait.

Blue can’t teleport. He reaches for Nightmare’s hand just outside the front door.

“This is so illegal.” Even Papyrus can’t travel between the AUs, and he’s a sentry.

“Nobody will know.” Those uncharacteristic words. That determined set to his face. The way he grabs onto Nightmare’s fingers like a vice. And over it all, the permeating, unwavering scent of fear.

Nightmare yanks him through into the nothingness, and on to the other side.

Blue doesn’t get sick. Only retches a little, at the slime in his throat and dripping out his eyes. It’ll dissolve soon enough, or at least Nightmare hopes so. He’s never taken a passenger before, through the winding, instantaneous pathways of negative emotion. But you can’t get into the antivoid, if you’ve never been there before.

Blue hasn’t let go of him. He’s shaking, blinking into the whiteness as muddy tears run down his face.

“You do realize I could find you again, if you got lost.”

“Even if I’m not… feeling bad?” He’s as deluded as the rest of them, about the true extent of negative emotion.

Nightmare sighs. “Everyone feels bad. Especially when they’re lost.”

Blue shoots him a look. And lets go of his hand.

Nightmare rubs the feeling back into his fingers. The slime is fading, and Blue would look almost normal if he wasn’t absolutely terrified. “Do you wanna go back?”

He shakes his head. It’s funny. He’s always been so confident, even when he’s wrong. He’s not used to pretending, and it shows. “Where is he?” he asks, looking around like he expects Error to be waiting in this exact spot.

Nightmare rolls his eyes. “The antivoid is pretty big. Thought you might want to get used to it first. Popping up into his living room isn’t exactly the best idea.”

Blue frowns, though he looks a bit grateful, even Nightmare can tell that. “Well, don’t take all day or Dream’ll go back on his word.”

“He won’t. We don’t lie to each other.”

Blue doesn’t say anything, but his silence says it all. That Dream and Nightmare might choose to live in that comfortable delusion, and take a sort of altruistic pride in their part of maintaining it. That Dream has every intention of going out, to do his job or otherwise, if only to spite his brother and his concern. “At least wait till we come back,” Nightmare told him. “And see how you feel then.”

Dream didn’t put his cloak back on.

Blue waits with a calm almost as atypical as his attire. Hands in his pockets, feet spread apart. His best Papyrus imitation. After a time he stops shaking, and the nerves settle into a more manageable level.

And still Nightmare makes him wait. Makes himself wait, for as long it takes. To stop caring.

“You don’t want me to see him.” He says it triumphantly, like he’s just unearthed some shocking secret.

“How’d you guess?”

Blue is grimacing. “No, I mean… All this time I figured you just didn’t want the bother, or you were worried we’d get in fight.”

“I am.”

“But you’re just scared you’ll lose your friend.”

Nightmare decides it’s time to start after all. “Come on,” he says, and starts walking into the whiteness.

Blue follows at a more confident distance. “So… he’s feeling bad too, huh?” he asks after a while.

Nightmare sighs again. ”What’d I tell you about that?”

“Well, yeah, but I mean… All the time?”

Nightmare closes his eyes. It doesn’t matter. It’s not like there’s anything to trip on. “Yeah. All the time,” he says.


	13. Chapter 13

“You were right. It doesn’t work.” Dream hunches his shoulders. It’s cold, without his cape on. He tells himself he didn’t realize he’d forgotten it till he was out, and there’s no point in going back now. “Night is still unhappy. Blue is still unhappy. Papyrus is still unhappy. The only person I was ever any good for got better on his own, after I gave up.” He laughs, without much humor.

Fresh is completely bewildered. The surface level of Underfell is one of the most chaotic, toxic environments in the multiverse. Monsters live in segregated areas, and hate crimes are plentiful on both sides. Fresh isn’t even sure what to do first, not that he minds the extra work. But why Dream chose to come, no, to _meet_ here, after weeks of dealing with petty drama on stable worlds is beyond him. He’d have expected a fight, if Dream wasn’t so weakened by the negative atmosphere. Now he just seems forlorn, huddled beside him on a creaking bench under a flickering streetlight. Fresh coughs awkwardly. “I, uh… I guess they told you about me, huh?”

“Yeah.” Dream can’t quite manage to sound like he cares.

“Kinda figured you’d have picked a fight with me by now. Told me to buzz off and whatever.”

“Wouldn’t do any good.”

Fresh can’t argue with that. He looks over to where there’s something like a bulletin board outside the storefront almost directly across from him. There’s a purplish, snake-like creature with sunglasses painted on some kind of a poster.

“What you do…” Dream is looking up at him with a tired, earnest curiosity. “Does it work?”

Fresh thinks. Ducks his head. “You know, they… they started saying things like, ‘Fresh made me do it,’ yo, in some of these places where they heard about me. Like when they get caught doing something not so rad, you know what I’m saying? Not that I’d mind, yeah, making their dreams come true and all. Just… they ain’t even sanses, right?” He lifts up his glasses a moment, to look his little friend in the eye.

Dream stares, at the swollen sockets, the red, weakened soul hovering just inside and to the left. “Do they have to be?” he asks, and his voice comes hoarse. “Sanses.”

Fresh lets his glasses fall again. Looks away, up the street. And down, at his bony hands. “Yeah. He got that much right.” He gets up, and stretches. “They don’t appreciate us, little bro,” he sighs, and starts walking.

“Wait, where… where are you going?” Dream is up, and waiting just behind him when he turns.

“Getting to work, yo. Something you haven’t done here in a while, yeah?”

But Dream is tired of feeling guilty. He’s tired of being told that he’s not good enough when he already knows it, when he’s told _himself_ plenty of times. “You try then,” he snaps angrily. “Make it all perfect, just let me know when you’re done.”

Fresh whistles. “Chill out, little bro. I ain’t the enemy here. What, you wanna fight with me or something? Tired of fighting with yourself, yeah, and doesn’t matter what I think anyway, right?”

Dream blinks. Steps back. “I just…. Wanted to know how you deal with it, is all.”

“What? Being a p… a symbiont? Giving back what I take, yeah, and making the worlds a better place?”

Dream snorts. Wipes at his eyes. “Never mind.” Nothing to see here. He turns, and heads the other way.

“Hey.” And he’s in front of him, blocking his path. “Aight, so you’re tired of that, I get it. The whole… dishonesty thing.” His voice is different. And he seems very tall all of a sudden.

Dream swallows. “Let me by.”

Fresh smiles, and Dream is pretty sure it doesn’t reach his eyes. Nothing reaches his eyes beyond that desperate, pleading soul. “You know I think you’re kind of a hypocrite, little bro. You don’t believe in all this stuff, do you? In making everybody happy. Look at you.” He laughs, a loud, hoarse cackle to rival Nightmare’s. “When’s the last time you were happy?”

Dream doesn’t know. He doesn’t keep track.

Dream can’t sense negative emotions, but he knows enough to read the frustration in Fresh’s body language. The way he clenches and unclenches his hands, chest heaving. “Why’s it gotta be that way, huh?” he mutters. “Why we gotta be liars like they are, and only ‘cause they made us that way?”

A blur of motion, and Dream squeaks as he rips off his glasses. Cruel, purple talons. Climbing, clawing their way out of his left eye-socket.

“I’m sorry little bro,” he says, and his face doesn’t move. “I didn’t wanna have to do this.”

Dream screams.


	14. Chapter 14

He doesn’t get angry. He doesn’t panic, and destroy anything. He doesn’t lose control, and say things he doesn’t mean. He doesn’t… crash.

“Why didn’t you j-just ask me?” he says.

“I thought you’d… say no.”

Error frowns in a way that means he doesn’t believe it. Eyes him over his glasses in a way that means they’ll talk about this later. Nightmare hugs himself, though it’s not cold, in the antivoid. It’s not anything in the antivoid, and that’s the point.

“So do you just… sew now?” Blue. As tactless as ever.

Error gives him the look next. “What do you expect me to d-do, kid?”

Blue shrugs and leans on the television. “Oh, I don’t know, destroy another couple of universes I guess.”

Error grins and resumes his needlework. “The other you was a l-lot less spiteful.”

Startled, Blue glances at Nightmare, who makes a point of looking the other way. “Wh-what do you mean? He was… me, right?” Stuttering as much as Error does.

Error jabs himself with a muttered curse. He sighs and lays aside his needle, getting to his feet. Blue distinctly doesn’t flinch. “W-Wanna go somewhere and talk? I’ve only got the one beanbag.”

Just like that. Nightmare doesn’t know how to feel, when Error looks at him again, a silent question in his eyes. But they’re doing just fine on their own, so he shakes his head. Lets them pass through the rent Error makes, in the nothingness. He can see the stars, peeking through just beyond.

Blue has given up looking to Nightmare for cues. He doesn’t even hesitate.

A cool breeze. The white noise of a distant city. The glitter of thestars - the kind of light you can only see in the dark. And the _colors._ It’s been ages since he’s seen them, seen anything but gray sameness be it day or night. And the one responsible, standing just beside him and looking at the sky with as much or more eagerness. It’s a little disconcerting, that someone like that would prefer a place like this to the endless emptiness he created - out of ____Tale, out of Underswap, out of the void itself.

“There’s only one y-you.”

What?

“What you were saying, b-before. Y-You’re not him.”

Oh.

Blue knows that. He knows that better than anyone and that’s why he came here, to tell him so and to prove it, to let him know he’s somebody and not anybody, that he’ll always be somebody despite him, that he’ll always be _here_ despite him and what he did, what he tried to do.

“Is that wh-why you came? For me to t-tell you… about him?”

The suggestion is calm, quiet.Blue tears, streaking innocuously down his face. Neon yellow eye-lights, glowing gently through the lenses of his glasses. He’s got his hands in his pockets, like Papy does, and that same easy way of looking anywhere but at you.

“You… like it here?” Blue asks him.

Almost, he seems to smile. “Yeah.”

“Why don’t you just...”

“Move here?” He laughs. A glitchy, hiccuping sound. “Ink asked me that once. I g-guess I don’t… feel like… there’s a place. Without…. m-messing things up.”

Blue looks off toward the sky again. Endless constellations wink back at him from an infinitely unattainable sky. “You can go anywhere you want. You could try and make it work, if you care so much,” he snaps, and there’s that tone again, that… what, spiteful? tone he can’t seem to shake, lately. The one that doesn’t sound like him, like a Blue is supposed to sound.

“C-Caring… Doesn’t give you a fr-free pass.”

Blue isn’t sure if he heard that right. If he’s really being lectured, about caring, by the one who never bothered to care, to _think_ about anybody but himself.

“So I… try to stay out. Of the places, I haven’t already r-ruined.”

Blue sniffs loudly, and it’s only then that he realizes he’s crying. It’s too late to hide it, so he reaches up and wipes the tears with his sleeve. “Am I really that different?” he asks huskily, and Error shrugs like he doesn’t notice. Like Papy, when he’s pretending not to.

“It’s okay… to ch-change.”

Blue thinks about that for a while. And then, “Have _you_ changed?”

Another shrug. “I d-don’t know. I just try to… l-live like I have.”

Blue sniffs again, and turns around, half expecting the antivoid to be waiting, just behind him. “Can we go back now?” he asks, and Error come up beside him.

“Sure,” he blips, and a fresh tear opens up in the timeline.

“You don’t have to tell me. About the other me,” Blue tells him, and steps into the nothingness.


	15. Chapter 15

Inky blackness. Spilling from his eyes, parting around the light, around the gold, in his side. The best of him. The worst of you.

“You get used to it, little bro.”

Inky blackness. Oozing between your fingers, clinging to his hands where he pins you, where he crushes you in to the ground.

“How quick they turn on you.”

Nightmare’s laugh. Cold and high and _his,_ so very his, so that you know he is there, that he wants you dead as much as _it_ does, as much as the Sludge does and so you give up trying, you give up caring, you give up screaming because he’ll hear you, he’ll hear and he won’t come.

“How quick you turn on them.”

 _Please, let me go._ A futile effort. An empty promise. A broken, “I love you,” that twists from your throat as nothing more than a genuine lie, an exploitive truth.

“That it’s normal, and you ain’t different.”

Inky blackness. Pealing off him in sheets, clinging to his clothing and in the sockets of his eyes, looking, searching desperately for someplace to hide. But the dark can’t hide from the light. In the hot, searing light you shoot at him, you stab at him because you can, you can help it but you don’t.

“And you don’t gotta help it, little bro.”

Gentle. A killer’s hands, a killer’s voice, reaching to comfort. Reaching to cradle his cold, lifeless bones and say you’re sorry. Say you’re sorry.

“Whatever you say, whatever you do, doesn’t matter.”

He can’t forgive you. He can’t forgive you he died and so would you if he hadn’t. He can’t save you. He can’t save you he didn’t come and neither would you if he had.

Dream stops screaming.


	16. Chapter 16

He could be doing a lot of things but he just lies there. Alone, in some far corner of the antivoid. Or maybe the center. It doesn’t really matter. He does this, sometimes, when Error isn’t here. He’s not sure whether he likes it. The whiteness, the emptiness, the quiet. In fact, he’s pretty sure that he doesn’t, that some key part of him hates it but he remembers, that hatred, that place he can’t get to, in his mind. Back before he bore the sole responsibility, of leaving it.

One hand stretched out, palm up. Gloved fingers, idle and empty. Pretty soon it will run out, the final traces of negativity will fade into nothing. He will, too, then. Vanish from this place, only to reappear in another.

He’ll never run out of places to go.

But they get back before then. He can feel it, the return of their emotions, their souls, more raw than when they left but just as brittle. Dimly, he can make out Blue calling him. He’ll want to go home. And Nightmare to take him. To take him, and to stay there.

His fingers twitch. He rolls from his side onto his face, pressing it into the nothing. Willing himself back from whatever silent, drowsy state he inadvertently let himself slip into. And then he gets up.

Blue searches his face for an inordinately long time before speaking. “Ready?” he says finally, like a parent picking up his kid after a meeting.

Nightmare looks at Error, and maybe there is something in his face because Error stares too, for just a beat longer than necessary. And then he nods, an almost imperceptible dip of his head, and Nightmare reaches for Blue’s hand.

“Noot, don’t - “ Error stops short when he turns. “D-don’t worry about it. Dream, I mean. Fresh is… He’s a h-handful, but he wouldn’t… Well, he would, but he’d be s-sorry after.” He’s practically muttering to himself now.

Nightmare frowns. “Is that supposed to reassure me?”

Error thinks. “No. Just don’t… freak out. That only m-makes it worse.”

Oh, the irony. “That reminds me. What does Ink know about all this?”

That grimace. “Y-You’ll have to ask him.”

Nightmare shrugs. “Fine.” Slime bubbles up around his feet.

Error doesn’t even blink. “T-Try not to worry.” And steps back.

Nightmare is all too eager to get away, to melt back down, out of the silence, out of the concern into the kinds of emotion he can actually understand. There’s a jolt, as he passes from the something, through the nothing and into the everything. A weak hiccup, like a skipped soulbeat, and the worlds blink around him. An emptiness, in his mind, in his head.

“…I thought we were going home,” says a voice, and not the one he just heard, he just didn’t hear, and Nightmare reels. “…Night?”

It’s over in a moment and his thoughts flicker back in, the sounds, the beat of negative emotion like a pulse of consciousness, and Blue steadying him, peering into his eyes like a concerned mother. Something Nightmare never had. Or never knew that he had.

“N-Nothing I just, for a moment I thought I heard…”

Blue frowns and draws back. Looks around, at the colors. He can’t help it when his eyes become stars, and Nightmare can’t help it when he smiles. When it’s different so his face hurts. “Does Dream know you do that?” he asks, and Blue turns, blinking them away.

“Do what?”

Nightmare rolls his eyelights. The left one alone pulses, twists, into a purplish shape. Perhaps not quite a star, but it does have five points.

“Oh. Yeah. I guess he does.” Blue is staring. “Does he know you do?”

Nightmare blinks, too. “I don’t.”

And that’s that. Ink is over somewhere to the east, if there is any east here. Nightmare starts walking.

“This is where he lives, right?”

“Yep.”

“I wish he could… make Omega… more like this.”

Nightmare doesn’t answer. But it seems to him things are a whole lot simpler without Ink involved. And maybe that’a good thing.

He’s just sitting, when they reach him. Crosslegged. Idle. Not a brush in his hands, even Broomy. He just sits and stares, off toward the border. He doesn’t acknowledge either of them, or even blink away the shapes, which are the only clues to his emotions, even for Nightmare. A floating, lavender heart. A funny, bluish spiral.

Nightmare doesn’t bother with the niceties. “So… Who’s Fresh?”


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Been waiting to write this chapter for a while. Hope you enjoy!

I started like they all did. With a Sans.

For a while it was just us. With very little frame of reference, he couldn’t perceive the depth of my failure. A sticky, messy expression of my own fear, my own horror when I saw him. When he saw _me_ , and tried to mimic my smile with that misshapen row of pointed teeth, to make shapes with his one eye.

I didn’t know where to keep him. When I first tried to leave, without him, he latched onto my face. Climbed into my head through the eye, and stayed there, speaking into my mind like he belonged there. I guess he did, and that’s the problem.

That’s when I got the glasses.

I didn’t take him far. And he was quiet, when I asked him. He got to know there were other places, other people, like me, and that I made them.

He never asked, why I didn’t make any more like him. I think he took for granted, that he was unique, that he was significant, to me.

He started projecting words, thoughts, even mine, onto the lenses. They were silly, and sometimes rude. Especially when we were with Error.

I started leaving him home.

I liked talking to Error, without Fresh. I liked… forgetting. Error was like me, and didn’t remind me of my failures. He dared to do what I couldn’t, and got rid of his own mistakes as well as others’.

I told him to stop.

Eventually, I brought Error over to show him the Doodle Sphere, and that’s when they met, officially.

Fresh was… different. I think he knew, then, that things had changed. That he wasn’t normal. That we were two, we were many, and he was one. That it wouldn’t be just us, anymore.

I don’t think he meant any harm, when he did it. More like he was just showing off, maybe. But Error was always a little jumpy, so when Fresh went in his eye he kinda lost it. And I… well… It was different, than with me. He found a soul, and a whole host of emotions he could never find, in me. And the power, that came with it.

Needless to say, I was beside myself, when he took over. Started talking, with Error’s mouth. Seeing, with his eyes. I couldn’t get him out, not without potentially harming Error, and Error couldn’t even speak to me. Once, in his eyes I saw the words, “Help me.” I’m not sure whose they were.

I was terrified. I begged. I threatened. I promised. But Fresh just laughed at me. “Seriously? You’re not even a person!” he said.

He destroyed a lot of universes, then. Ones I’d made. I couldn’t stop him, and it was all my fault. I gave up trying. And just… stayed at home. Watching through the pools, wondering where he would strike next. Alone again.

Eventually he came back. I’m not sure why… At the time, I figured he just got bored. That’s what I do, when I get bored. But he came out, all on his own. Told me he was sorry. Something about Error’s soul, being weak. And Error, he was never really the same after that. Apparently Fresh made him relive his worst memories, over and over. So he couldn’t remember them at all. He was afraid, to get close, to anyone, to the point that it became physically painful for him, to be touched. In case it might happen again. I guess it was pretty scary.

I couldn’t forgive Fresh.

I told him he ruined everything, that I didn’t want to see him anymore. I may have hurled the glasses. Said I wouldn’t be needing them. I hated him so much. He had taken everything I cared about, and ruined it. I ruined it. And I didn’t want to remember that. At all.

Funnily enough, it was Error who said I was too hard on him. He’d seen what I couldn’t, in Fresh’s memories and thoughts. He understood Fresh, he said. His feelings. And this was all just a misunderstanding. That we could fix it.

But I didn’t want to hear it. “You take him then,” I said. “If you’re such great pals.”

And he did. He never talked to me about Fresh, after that. And I never asked what happened to him. Error and I carried on as always.

I became obsessed with fixing ___Tale. With restoring my home, so I could… go back. So I could have my real friends and my family back, and none of the mess I had created. When Error found out about it, he wasn’t happy. He told me I was fighting a losing battle. That I was making myself crazy. Well, I’d already made him crazy.

I think it was Fresh who told him to do what he did. Fresh knew about it, of course. About ___Tale, and what I wanted. He might’ve fed into the idea that I was hurting myself, with this obsession. I heard when Error destroyed my AU, they were both laughing.

Fresh reminds him of his failure, too. Error told him to go ruin something of his own, since he’d already ruined everything of mine, and his. Blamed him for everything, when I pushed him away, too. Fresh took his hat, and left. He always did like that hat.

It’s funny, I always figured Error destroyed him. I hoped he did. I hoped it was the end of my creations, and my mistakes. I could just… not care about anything, anymore. Nothing was really mine, after all. Even my own feelings, weren’t mine. I could fight Error, and hurt him if I wanted. I could hurt anyone with a clear conscience, no matter what got destroyed in the process. It didn’t matter. It was all just a battlefield, and they were my enemies.

I never guessed he was just hiding. Fresh, I mean. Or that I’d have to do anything, if he came back.

Why, did Dream say something?


	18. Chapter 18

No one ever stopped screaming that fast before. Some keep it up for days, even weeks. But Dream fell silent after a few short minutes, with only the weak pulse of his soul to indicate anything other than a taciturn indifference to each mental broadcast, each monotone delivery from his memory.

And perhaps it makes sense. He is the guardian of positivity. Whatever it might seem on the outside, it would make sense, for him to have more good memories than bad ones. For him to lean on them, to protect himself on the inside. After all, negative experiences aren’t the only ones Fresh finds in Dream’s mind.

Blue’s face, filling your vision.

_Don’t you know you’re safe now?_

Nightmare’s voice. Just his voice, and the sound of a turning page.

_Yeah, I love you._

Papyrus. And your squeal of delight, as he brings you piggyback down the stairs.

_Make it count, right?_

The front porch, all in gray.

_I hope we can be friends, still. After this._

Nightmare’s arms around you. When he gives up, and his tears soak your shoulder. When you give up, but keep trying. _You never make me sad, bro._

_R̷̙̲͍̈́̈́͝ě̶̫̭̩̆̆ḁ̸̡̪̫̽l̴̨͕̟͋̐͝ḻ̷͙̂̊́̈y̴͎̐̈́̒?̸̨̽͐͠_

The front porch, without color.

_I hope we can be friends, still. A̷f̴t̴e̸r̵ ̸t̷h̸i̶s̵._

A lavender swirl, and a green triangle.

_I̷̼̋'̸̰̌̇d̵͙̥̅ ̸̫͚͛l̶̟͊̏i̴͓̫͆k̴̳̱̿e̷̺͐̕͜ ̵̲͝t̵̯̀̈́h̸̩̟̓à̶͇͑t̸͔́͜.̷̙̽̈́_

Fresh stops. It wasn’t doing much good anyway. Dream’s soul emits only a weak flutter in response, to each recollection. He doesn’t care about _that_ , anymore than the rest of it, now.

“Did he ever talk to you about it?” Fresh asks him. “About what happened. With Sludge.”

Dream says nothing. Thinks nothing. Only a strained throb of unease confirms the answer.

“Don’t surprise me. He don’t seem like the type, to make it easy on anyone but himself.”

Dream tries to be displeased, but instead he feels relieved. Recognized. Validated, and Fresh laughs. “You can’t lie to me, little bro. Not now. But, uh…” Fresh hesitates. “Maybe we do something about it, you know what I’m saying? This don’t have to be about just me. Maybe let him know, uh… how you feel.”

Dream doesn’t _want_ to want to do that. But he can’t quite manage.

Fresh laughs again. “Sure thing, yo.”


	19. Chapter 19

Blue doesn’t want to go home, judging by the way he drags his feet. They materialized down by the bridge, so that they wouldn’t be seen. So that Blue wouldn’t be seen, coming back out of nowhere. So now they’re just walking the rest of the way.

It’s getting late, though you can’t tell from the sky. And Nightmare hasn’t slept in a while.

“So much for getting back soon, huh?”

Nightmare _hmphs_ and picks up the pace. But he knows already that Dream isn’t here. He hasn’t felt anything from Dream in ages. And he’s too tired to worry. Besides, it wouldn’t do any good. Dream will do whatever he wants, feel whatever he wants regardless of what Nightmare does, or doesn’t do. He’s had about enough, of dealing with other people’s problems for one day. And not dealing with them, when they won’t let him.

“Screw Ink,” he says suddenly. “Who does that.”

Blue doesn’t laugh. He stumbles a bit as they walk. “I don’t know,” he yawns. “Maybe there’s more to it.”

“Doesn’t matter, honestly. He’s irresponsible. And leaves everyone else to take care of it.”

“Is that what you’re gonna do?” Blue asks drowsily, unlocking the door. “Take care of it?”

“You know what? I don’t know. Dream seems pretty sure he can.”

Blue shoots him a look and lets them inside. The lights are off. Papyrus is out, working a nightshift.

“Hot chocolate?” Nightmare asks.

“Too tired.”

“K.” Nightmare doesn’t bother to check the bedroom. Just plops down on the couch and rests his head in his hand. Maybe, if he’s careful, he won’t notice he’s so tired, in the morning.

Blue watches him. “How come you don’t like to sleep?” he asks softly.

“Who says I don’t?” he might have said. On any other day. But Blue has been pretty reasonable today, and polite. He didn’t cause any problems with Error, and he was quiet as a mouse at Ink’s. So, “I don’t mind sleeping. It’s the waking up part,” he replies simply, and rubs at his eyes.

Blue sits on the other end. “Yeah?” he prods, with the patience of a saint, and Nightmare stops being rude and looks at him.

“Yeah like. When I wake up, it’s like I’m… trapped in my own head again. I can’t move for the longest time. And it’s…” He takes a breath. “It scares me.”

“Sleep paralysis.”

Frown. “What?”

Blue shrugs. “It’s like… when your mind wakes up before the rest of you. I’ve had it happen, sometimes.”

Nightmare isn’t sure what to think. That Blue might know something about it, might have _experienced_ it himself is a complete shock to him. “Yeah, well, try all the time,” he mumbles, thoroughly grumpy again, and adjusts the pillow, under his arm.

“Papy used to have it, all the time. He was scared to sleep. Sometimes, I’d sneak in and lie on the floor, in case he woke up scared, and no one was there.”

Nightmare squints at him. “Which one of you is the older again?”

Another one of those looks. “You can laugh, but it wasn’t funny. And if it’s happening to you, you could’ve just told us.” Blue settles himself more comfortably on his side of the couch and rests his head on the armrest.

Nightmare would ask what he would’ve done, if he’d told him. But he figures he knows already.

He puts his head down, and closes his eyes.

Opens them in a panic. Jolts back up again, with a shuddering breath. Blue groans and sits up too. Flicks on the lamp. The only sound is the clock, ticking over the tv. 3:30.

“You’re fine,” Blue mumbles automatically, rubbing his eyes and putting an arm around Nightmare’s shoulders. “You’re fine, it’s okay.”

Nightmare closes his eyes. Focuses on breathing. “Sorry,” he says, and it comes out all quavery.

“You’re fine,” Blue repeats, and turns the lamp back off.

They sit like that, in the semi darkness and mostly silence. Blue rests his head against Nightmare’s, and just when Nightmare thinks he might be well on his way to falling asleep again, he speaks. And not a trace of drowsiness in his voice.

“You know, when you left… that first time. I thought I’d ruined everything… for Dream.”

Nightmare doesn’t say anything.

“I mean, before he was so guilty, and miserable. And I tried to help him, but… But he thought of nothing but you, the whole time he was here, and you weren’t. So then when you came, I thought maybe… he might be happy again.”

Nightmare shifts. “Well, I’ve… never been very good, at making people happy,” he says, meaning to make him laugh, but when Blue begins to shake it’s not with laughter.

Nightmare pulls away, startled. He’s never known Blue to cry before.

“I’m sorry,” the little skeleton wails, wiping at his eyes.

“For what, crying?”

“I’m sorry I never got to _know_ you. I’m sorry I never _listened_ to you. I’m sorry I called myself your brother when I wasn’t even your friend.”

Nightmare doesn’t know what to do. If Dream was here, he’d know. Then again, if Dream was here, and happy, this probably wouldn’t have happened. Even if Nightmare hates himself for thinking it.

“Hey…” he starts, and his voice comes hoarse, and not as neutral as he’d hoped. “You know, I’m not surprised, when people like Dream more than me. I don’t make myself very… likable. And when the two of you let me stay here, for his sake… It never really bothered me.”

It was the wrong thing to say. It’s always the wrong thing to say, which is why Nightmare should learn to keep his mouth shut. But, right or wrong, Blue is only crying harder, with his hands at his face. Guilt. Denial. Frustration. Despair.

“I guess that just makes it worse, huh.” And all at once Nightmare is angry. He’s furious, with Blue. With Dream, and himself. His voice comes out choked with it. “Blue, if… if you care this much why don’t we do something about it.”

“Wh-What?” He pulls his hands down from his eyes. Heaves with a couple of suppressed sobs.

“I mean, it’s never gonna happen if we keep waiting… till we’re better. To be friends.” Not family. Not yet.

Blue’s face twitches uncertainly. He clears his throat. “So…”

Nightmare resists the urge to roll his eyes. “So, you say we don’t know each other, we should just… get to.”

Blue sniffs. Searches his face. “You mean that?”

“Yeah, I mean… It was kinda fun, today. Not being by myself.”

Those stars again. They’re a bit wobbly, through the tears. “Oh.” He sits up straighter, and sets about cleaning up his face. Stops, with a sudden thought. “And you won’t…” Hiccup. “I mean, you won’t say stuff like I don't really like you?”

Nightmare rests the side of his head against the couch wearily. “I probably will. But only when you say I’m too negative or something. Let’s not be too optimistic about this.”

Blue is not pleased. He frowns, thinking hard. “Okay, but only once a month,” he concedes finally, and Nightmare’s mouth twists.

“Deal.”


	20. Chapter 20

Ink looks like death when he shows up in the antivoid.

Error gives up on sewing for one day. He sticks the needle down into an embroidered dishtowel resignedly. Embroidery is a pain, anyway. He prefers clothing. Simple, tasteful clothing. Not that mess of a garb Ink never changes.

Speaking of, he forgot his scarf. Must be pretty serious. Or maybe he just wanted to forget, by the time he got here.

“Error, he’s…” Ink is staring off at something that isn’t there when Error walks over. “He’s in Omega.”

Error bites back a curse. “Well, wh-what are you doing here, then?”

Finally, Ink’s mismatched eye-lights make the long journey back over, to focus on him. “I… I can’t do this.”

“Yes you can.” Error doesn’t care. He grabs him by the shoulders, suddenly angry. “You listen to me. Ok?” He gives him a shake. “Yes you can. You’ve g-got to.”

That absent trace of a smile. The whitening eyes. And the shaking, so much shaking. “There’s nothing I can…”

“No. You know what? You’re not bailing out one me this time. And you kn-know what else?” Error lets him go, ignoring his throbbing palms, and takes off his glasses. Folds them up carefully, sets them on the tv. “You’re t-taking me with you.”

That gets his attention. His eyes widen, flickering purple, burgundy. Shock. “What, to… to Omega? I can’t… I can’t do that.”

“Look. You told me you’d let me know if there was something only I could do. That I’m _allowed_ to do. If this isn’t damage control I don’t know what is.”

Shaking his head. Backing up. “There’s no way. They wouldn’t let me - I mean, I could be - ”

“What, then?” The words come out in a symphony of garbled white noise. “What do you want me to do? Why’d you come here? When are you going to _let_ me do anything, if not now?”

Ink’s head in his hands. Muttering. “No. I don’t know.”

“Ľ̷̯i̷̞͆s̷̭̕t̶̘̾ę̶̕n̴̩͝ ̵̋͜t̴̤͝ȯ̷̡ ̶̫̄m̴̲̆ë̶̝́!̷̟̎” Up in his space. “You think you’re the only one who cares about this? About Fresh? About _Dream?_ Pretty lucky you’re not, isn’t it?”

He might as well have slapped him, he knows that. But Error doesn’t like touching people, when he can help it. When he’s calm enough to help it. When he’s angry enough to help it, or he might hurt somebody.

He takes a breath. “Ink. L-Let me in there, or so help me… I’m done. I’m done with this… charade we’ve been p-playing.”

“What do you mean.” White eye-lights again. Empty. Frozen.

“I mean I’m going, somewhere I can be useful. And if that’s nowhere that’s… fine. I’d rather be useless than pretending... I’m not.”

“That’s blackmail.” Strained. Impassive.

“Hell yeah it is. And guess who doesn’t give a shit?”

“Fine.” No change of expression. Ink turns around. Balls his hands into fists. Hunches a little. Comes back. “Let’s go.”


	21. Chapter 21

Colors. Splattered in a hodgepodge of no intention.

_It’s been this way… forever._

Stitches. Stretching in row of meticulous precision.

_Let me… try._

The lenses. On your face.

_Don’t… draw attention to yourself._

The cap. On your head.

_It… s-suits you._

Memories. In his head.

_Yeah, I usually just... Try to forget._

Feelings. In his soul.

_If I could just… r-remember._

Cold. Indifferent.

_Yeah, you can stay in here if you want. It doesn’t matter._

Hot. Furious.

_Get the f-funk out of my head!_

Nothingness. And the flat, expressionless lines of his face.

_I won’t let you do this._

Laughter. And that warm, fond trace of a smile.

_Quit d-doing that._

And not even the ability to hate.

_But I would, if I could. Believe me, it counts._

And not even an attempt to hide it.

_That… s-swearing thing. It’s annoying as funk._

_Go away,_ he says. Like you have an away to go to.

 _C-Come on_ , he says. Like he has any place to take you.

_Will it be this way… forever?_

Mismatched eyes and a broken trust.

_…_

Mismatched eyes and an undeserved trust.

_…_

“Enjoying yourself?”

Dream hasn’t yet mustered the energy to speak, in his mind or otherwise. But _enjoying_ wouldn’t be the right word, if he had. Only a sullen defiance, as he sifts through Fresh’s memories the way Fresh did his. He can’t really help it anyway. And this is the first time… he’s been able to feel it.

Negativity. From someone else.

It’s not… exactly what he expected. It doesn’t make him want to be sick, or even fix it. And it’s not entirely unwelcome. To find out he’s not the only one, who feels like garbage.

“Ha. Reminds me of when I first tried it. Drawing on emotion. Ink ain’t got any, you know.”

And there’s something wrong about that. There’s something wrong about that the way there’s something wrong about this, this endless stream of memories. Feelings, toward versions of people Dream doesn’t recognize, Dream can’t recognize or he’ll lose himself, too.

“Little different than they told you, huh? Kinda like… Kinda like when somebody turns into something else, and you figure they’ve changed but really they just been that way all along only you couldn’t see it.” Laughter. “But I get it. I get it, little bro, I mean…” A gathering, a vortex of thoughts, of images, of sounds he thinks he knows. “At first I figured they were just the same.” And that Error he does know - crimson eyes, smoldering with a crazed light. Strings from his fingers, and no remorse. “Getting rid of something he used to love, and only ‘cause it wasn’t right by some outside definition, yo. Wasn’t wanted - wasn’t _needed_. Wasn’t going the way he _planned_ , and so it must be wrong, yeah?” A red scarf, a pixelated eye. A silent child and the same nightmare, not his Nightmare but an actual nightmare, that made his life seem like a dream.

Fresh is quiet while it dissolves.

“Guess he figured… they better off dead than alive then.” With something wistful, resigned in his voice. And then cold. Dark. A sound that is silence.

“I made him remember. I made him remember until he forgot. And remembered again. And each time it was like waking from another dream, another nightmare until he couldn’t tell which one was real.”

Pause.

“But I did leave him, the other one. The other memory, once I found it.” That Blue he doesn’t recognize. Older. And none of the sharpness at the edges. “Wouldn’t be fair if he forgot, that one.” Dream isn’t sure who Fresh was so concerned about being fair to. But he doesn’t get the chance to ask, before Fresh continues. “Got rid of him too - long before Ink. And me.” More laughter. “Oh yeah, he made a little friend, all on his own. And not even a soulless, needy shell of a monster with a validation complex.” A vicious spike in negativity, that leaves Dream’s head fuzzy and throbbing, this time. Then -

“Well, not really made yo, only made him how he was, and made him nothing when he couldn’t make him back again.” An Error who is blue and Blue who is nothing. “But he kept the timelines, yo, the swap ones for a while. Or so I hear. I was watching a while, you know, till Ink got him back on his leash. Figured it was my turn, then.”

A ramble. That Dream can’t quite follow.

Fresh doesn’t seem to mind. “No wonder they were friends, you know what I’m saying.” Soft again. Quiet. Then another gathering, of his thoughts. And not so negative this time.

“But then I realized his plan. To off himself last, or maybe just now with me leeching off him. And he didn’t mind. Hated himself, yo, more than me. More than anything _he_ made. More than wherever he came from, or was going. We’d both been made to feel this way, by Ỉ̶̙͓͇͋ņ̵̱͔͊͛͛̀k̴͖͉͉̈́͊̕͜ and his perfect worlds.

“Kinda funny, right? We were on the same side, all along.”

Heavy silence. And the vague shape of something Dream understands, that Dream tries to give but can’t receive, anymore. And almost, he is done trying.

“You doing okay, little bro?”

He’s doing nothing. He is nothing, now. And it’s nice.

More laughter. “Not quite, bud.” An inaudible sigh. “But it’s cool. You been through a lot - and seen a lotta things your own f̸͎̉r̵̢͝î̴̘e̵̟̚n̷̬̏d̶̤̉ never meant you to see, yeah. Probably why he worried in the first place, yo, and told you go home like you got a home to go to."

“…” Almost words.

“Oh, nah, don’t give me that little bro. I seen you sobbing for hours, you know. And that’s what great about this, see - no more lying, and being a hypocrite yo. Just what you tired of, and not just seeing it but being it - and no offense.”

Dream is getting tired. It’s fine, just… do whatever you’re gonna do. And let me sleep.

“I would, but… Kinda think you gonna wanna be awake for this.”

Why. Why why why.

“ ‘Cause I think that’s your brother, coming up the road. Ain’t it?”

What road. What brother.

Gray. And that’s better. Even Fresh thinks it’s better. After all, he told me to go home.

“Yeah. Like I say, he’s good at that. At making sure you got no home to go to, and sending you there, I mean.”

At making sure you got no…

Dream laughs. It doesn’t reach his throat. “Yeah.”

It's nice, once in a while. When it's someone else's fault.


	22. Chapter 22

It happened this way.

Ink shows up in the living room with Error just as Papyrus is coming home from work, so that Blue and Nightmare just about jump out of their nonexistent skins.

Needless to say, there are a lot of reasons Papyrus doesn’t want to see Ink in his house, let alone _the destroyer,_ and Blue has his work cut out for him.

Blue has his work cut out for him, because Nightmare isn’t staying one second longer than he has to.

“Wait,” Ink tells him, and Nightmare snaps something about how that’s all Ink ever does, and if he’d kept a closer eye on Dream to begin with they wouldn’t be in this mess.

He’s talking to himself again.

Error’s the one who calls him out on it. Grabs him by the cape he made, shoves him back down onto the couch. Tells him to calm the fuck down and there’s n-no reason to be that disrespectful. They’re all worried, he says.

Ink takes a leaf out of Nightmare’s book and stands there just about hugging himself and doing nothing, staring at the floor. Blue touches his arm and asks if he wants to sit down, to which Ink wisely shakes his head.

Papyrus is just standing there with an unlit cigarette. About six years of hatred in his eyes. “I take it this is your fault,” he tells Ink, who shrugs and won’t look at him.

Papyrus locks eyes with Nightmare. “I told you I don’t care who you’re friends with,” he says. And his voice is like ice. “But I don’t want him in my house.”

“Please… don’t be mad at Error.” Finally, Ink speaks up, and his voice quavers dangerously. “I brought him here. But only to help,” he adds, and Papyrus makes a derisive noise.

“You’ve got about thirty seconds to convince me not to call the guard.”

“We don’t have thirty seconds for any such of a th-thing,” Error snaps. “I don’t care what you th-think of me. Those kids are out there, about to do who knows what, and you n-need me here more than you c-could possibly imagine, so why d-don’t you just help or get out of the way.”

They stare at each other for long moment. Then -

“Blue, come here.”

He’s still holding onto Ink. Or maybe Ink is holding onto him. Either way, the little skeleton’s answer is barely more than a whisper. “No, Papy.”

Silence.

Nightmare gets up. Error doesn’t stop him. “He’s right, Blue. Stay here.” His voice is hoarse.

“No.” Louder, this time. “You told me you’d start taking me with you.”

“I didn’t - ” Nightmare stops, halfway turning on him.

“I’m not a _baby_!” Familiar. Brutal. “And you, blaming Ink, blaming Error when maybe none of this would’ve happened if you didn’t always treat Dream like one!”

“If _I_ didn’t…” Nightmare is so furious he can’t even speak. And empty. So empty, it’s like - “Why can’t I feel it,” he blurts, and turns searching eyes on Ink, on Error. “If he’s here, why can’t I feel anything from him.”

The other two outcodes exchange a look that says it all.

They don’t know.

Nightmare is gone in a moment.

“Right,” says Papyrus, into the silence. “That’s thirty.” And he starts for the door.

“Wait!” Ink is after him in the doorway. “Papyrus, please just trust me.”

“And what happened the last time I trusted you, huh?” Papyrus is coming back in, backing him up into the now vacant couch. “When are you gonna learn you can’t just play with people’s lives like the pieces of a game?”

“They’re not doing that.” Blue. Quiet. Calm. A couple of inches away from Error, and not even flinching. Not even staring. “It’s too late for all this, Papy. Dream’s in trouble. And I’m not a kid anymore.”

Papyrus straightens up. “Is that so?”

Blue swallows, and stands up a little taller. “Almost.”

Error does something strange then. One hand sort of falls up, like the most natural thing in the world. And rests on Blue’s head for just the fraction of a second. And all at once Papyrus understands. That Blue’s been lying to him. And no amount of seeing red, shouting profanities will do anything about it.

“Blue, come here,” he says again, and his voice is different.

That barest trace of hesitation, and he does. Right into his arms.

“Promise me you’ll talk to me about this later,” he murmurs, and Blue makes a choked, sorry sort of sound into his chest.

“Okay.” Papyrus lets him go. Looks up, coldly, at Error. “So what’s the plan?”


	23. Chapter 23

Nightmare is anything but positive when he sees… _it_ … coming up the street.

He’s short. About Dream’s height. Which only makes sense. He hasn’t got Dream’s cloak on, naturally. Only the gold from his vest peaks out from under that hideous, multicolored jacket. He’ll have to ask Error if he made that, too. He definitely made the hat. Perched half backwards, on his head. And on those glasses, over his eyes - YO LO.

Nightmare clenches his teeth. Fresh must’ve seen him because he stops. Several yards down the sidewalk, their sidewalk, coming up on their house. Coming home. Hands in his pockets, and a dazzling grin, the kind Nightmare never sees on Dream’s face.

And the silence.

“Come on, don’t do this to me,” Nightmare mutters. Like that’ll make any difference. Like it’s ever made any difference, to the silence, the deafening emptiness in his head.

“Do what?” But it’s not Dream’s voice, that comes out from behind those locked teeth. His smile broadens in a way that Nightmare didn’t think possible. “Do what, huh? Turn into a completely different person, yeah, and laugh while I finish you off? Why would anyone do that, yo?”

Nightmare blinks. It’s toying with him. So what, it knows things. Everyone knows things. Right? “Let him go.”

Laughter. Harsh. Abrupt. Echoing, down the sleepy, early morning boulevard. Dream, doubled up and laughing like he hasn’t in ages. “How can you be so stupid yo,” he bawls when he’s through, and the purple tears slipping down past darkened lenses. “He doesn’t _want_ to get rid of me.”

And despite himself, Nightmare’s soul leaps in his chest at those words. At the tense, the implication and all at once he’s on the pavement, crosslegged with his eyes closed and his hands folded, not even caring that he could die like this, only doing his best, now, to communicate in a way that will take all his concentration.

It’s messy, that little wave of conjured positivity. Concern, and affection. Remorse, and worry, though those probably won’t be able to bleed through, not to Dream, and maybe something stronger. Maybe, though he’s never been very good at it.

There’s no answer. No sound of a step. And then -

Hatred. Bitterness, and a loss he knows well. Here to equal and match, to overcome whatever petty care Nightmare sent him, and the guardian of negativity stumbles back, catching himself on one hand and gaping at the still, quiet skeleton before him.

Dream’s first sign of life in the last twenty-four hours.

It’s just conjured, surely - an answering signal, a confirmation, a cry for help, even. But it’s real. And he might have held it back, like he always does, if Nightmare hadn’t been asking for it directly. But he had, and now he knows.

He takes a deep, shuddering breath. “Big deal,” he gets out. “You think I care, that you hate me? That I’ll just go away, and leave you like this? That I’m… That I…” He pukes suddenly, off, onto the pavement.

Sludge.

And blinking back tears. “That I… That I hate me any less than you do?”

“Holy shit, you’re emo,” says a voice. And, “What the fuck did I just walk into?”


	24. Chapter 24

Nightmare is used to hearing voices. It’s the silence he doesn’t know what to do with.

At first he talked to himself, to try and fill it. In recent months he’s worked out another strategy, and listened. To the silence, and to voices that aren’t his, that could never be mistaken for his and so he isn’t. Mistaken, that is.

And so he doesn’t think much of it, when he hears it. A voice he didn’t know he’d forgotten until he heard it again.

After all, Nightmare hears a lot of things. Some are there, and some aren’t. The only one he can be sure of, in this moment, is Dream’s. His soul, if not his voice. And whatever abominable core makes this thing tick, the thing that took over his body and changed it, changed him into someone that Nightmare knows but doesn’t recognize.

But he’s not worried about that. After all, he’s not the first one to have to deal with something like this.

So when the voice says, “Are you seriously just gonna sit there and take it?” he gets up. And not because Sludge told him to but because he told him to, Nightmare decided to, that he’ll get up and face this because Dream faced him before, faced him and Sludge both, and nobody to help him either.

He retracts his tentacles. The purple ones he summoned before he even realized, and all curved and cruel, ready to hurt, to kill. Because whatever Dream did, whatever Dream was forced to do in order to save himself all those years ago, Nightmare can’t do it to Fresh. Not without killing Dream, the real Dream, the only Dream no matter how full of hate he might be right now, and leaving Fresh to escape unharmed. No, the only way for them to get through this, at this point, is to do their jobs. As they should have done them, and didn’t, for years.

Together.

And Sludge had fuck all to do with making that happen.

“Guilty as charged,” comes a snicker at the side of his head. “But at least I’m not deluded, on that front. Or any. Unlike a certain somebody.” That snicker again, and Nightmare smiles despite himself, though he doesn’t turn.

“Come on, since when are we any different?”

An explosion of powdered color. The whistle of a wooden bat, cutting through the cloud.

Nightmare ducks. Coughs. Rolls, and comes up in someody's garden. A splatter of paint, and a purple ball-and-chain snaps over his head, catching around the bat and ripping it from the parasite’s hands. Dream’s hands.

“That’s enough,” comes the stone cold command, and Nightmare gets the hell out of the way. He’s seen Ink fight before. Let them talk it out. He has enough to do.

His hands shake as he takes shelter under somebody’s front porch. Peers out through the wooden steps. “Alright,” he sighs to no one, and Sludge grins. He can’t see it, he just knows.

Time to get to work.


	25. Chapter 25

His feelings are cold, filtered through a century of secondhand influence. Muted, by those of the host he inhabits. Fresh feeds on the soul the same way Ink consumes its emotions. But where Ink gathers his feelings, his power from mostly willing donors in order to simulate who he used to be, Fresh summons his strength at the expense of his host in order to pretend, to make believe he is the Sans he was supposed to be. He doesn’t lack a soul, the way Ink does. Rather he is a soul, much like Dream was, or Nightmare, at their essence before ever consuming their perspective cores.

It’s not much to work with, but Nightmare gives it a shot. He can only hope that Dream will notice, will catch on to what he is doing and follow suit. Tentatively, Nightmare stretches out, past his brother’s waning pulse of hatred and on to the second source of emotion, the second soul within him and searches.

It’s different, than back in that alleyway. Of course, Ink has no more claim on Omega timeline, on Dream than he did on Horrortale. But he doesn’t seem to realize that. He stands there with his feet spread out like he owns the place, like he owns any place the way he owns the Doodle Sphere, the way he owns Fresh even if he doesn’t want him.

“What, a little damage control? Don’t want everybody to see what a duckup you are?”

The corners of Ink’s mouth twitch. “It isn’t the same, when you use it on yourself.”

“Says who?”

Well, Ink is the one who came up with it. Who told him to put better words, to put _cool_ words up over his lenses instead of the nasty ones, the ones he saw in Ink’s head, when he was mad. And Ink seemed pleased with him, when he did that. When he changed, and helped everyone else to change, too, when he could. If anyone should have a say, Ink should.

Problem is, Fresh doesn’t really care to hear it right now. “You always were good at taking credit for what you didn’t do. And blaming me for what you did.”

The colored smoke is clearing. Fresh starts to walk, further into the grayness, to sidestep the other.

Ink’s hand shoots out like a bullet. Catches him by the wrist. “Get out.” In a voice like frozen granite.

Fresh studies the hand grasping him just above his. “Interesting,” he observes cooly. “I’m suddenly your responsibility now, is that it? And you gotta protect them… All the ones that _ain’t_ your responsibility, from me, right? Gotta keep up that image, yo. Can’t have them knowing you’re a soulless _fraud_. Who calls himself a guardian only after he turns _me_ loose on the whole lot of them.”

Ink’s grip slackens. Opens. “You can say whatever you want to me,” he says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “But you have to… leave them alone.” Mismatched eyes and counterfeit trust. “Omega… and Dream.”

But Ink knows begging won’t work. It never worked on him; it won’t work on Fresh. And so he doesn’t really hope, he doesn’t really wait, for a favorable response. Already his hand is at his brush again, eyes watchful and ready for Fresh’s next move to be a violent one.

He’s never expected anything favorable, from Fresh.

He blinks. Swallows. Steps back. “Why not?” he chuckles shakily. “You could just make more.” And that’s when Nightmare makes his move. Prodding, molding, provoking, quelling. When Fresh is vulnerable, and caught off guard.

It doesn’t have an immediate affect. He thinks it’s just Dream, at first. Dream thinks it’s just Dream at first - that guilt, that longing, that emptiness, and he starts.

_Is it balance, yo, to hate yourself when you can’t make everyone else happy?_

And Fresh, still trying, still failing to monologue. “Thought you didn’t believe in interfering, yeah? Didn’t you say… that it just… messes things up? Only, it’s not like they ain’t naturally bad. Since you had a hand in making them.”

“You’re doing a pretty good job of messing things up yourself.”

Wrong. Wrong, I’m trying. I’m _trying…_ to

Tears. Fresh doesn’t know whose they are. “F-Fuck your balance, man,” he chokes.

A churning, inside. Dream starts to retch.

“All of you.” He sways. Whirls, to look down, directly into Nightmare’s hiding spot like he knows, like he can feel it and doesn’t care. “You think it’s okay, to make someone suffer just because you do, and how is that a balance?”

It’s not. It’s not a balance, it’s a give-me-back-my-brother, asshole.

Dream laughs.

Ink swings.

Fresh fires.

A row of blue bones comes up out of the ground around Nightmare, absorbing the rainbow colored blast. And it’s funny, that Fresh should choose to aim here first. There’s a low whistle from somewhere beside him, and Nightmare struggles to climb out, from under the porch.

“Blue,” he coughs, and staggers. “I told you to - ”

But he’s not listening. He stands there, gazing at the street with his hands in his pockets and one glowing teal eye, and all around him swirls an intricate pattern of floating bones. For a moment, Nightmare fights the wild urge to run the other way.

A squeak, from behind him at the house. A couple of rabbits are gazing blearily out the window. And all down the street, doors are opening, windows are shutting, and the sound of coming footsteps.

A flash of orange, of blue, and the two of them have him, Papyrus on one side and Blue on this one, twin rows of glowing bones embedded at all angles around him in the street and enough gravitational magic to pin down an entire army of real Sanses.

But Fresh isn’t a Sans. And though his knees buckle he could still leave, could still teleport only a blue rope shoots out and grasps him by the wrist, hauling him back, and Ink just watching it play out like a practiced, well ordered medical procedure.

Fresh stops struggling. Lets himself be dragged, bodily, through one crack in his new prison. He jolts, a little, when Error catches him. When Error grabs hold of his arms, pulling him to his chest, and doesn’t even flinch.

He starts to protest, to struggle again before Error speaks. “Listen now,” he says, in a low voice only he can hear, and Fresh stops. “You’re g-gonna have to quit being such a fucking baby. So people don’t always l-like you, big deal. Nobody likes me, do they?”

Snort. Must be Dream still laughing, from earlier, as Fresh shakes his head against Error’s shoulder, and the destroyer’s grip slackens, just a little. “R-Right. So get the funk over it and let the kid go.”

It hurts, more than anything Ink has said. As something tight and knotted in his chest starts to come undone.

“Wait,” says Dream, but he can’t, he’s already vomiting himself up and trying not to take Dream with him, to ruin Dream the way he ruined himself, the way Ink ruined both of them and Error has him, Error has them both and the smoke is clearing, the bones are clearing and they can’t hide forever, he can’t hide anymore and it won’t matter if he tries.

Won’t that be nice.

A howling sound, in the distance. Dogs.

Ink inches around the mess in the road. Staring. Hands clean, and folded neatly before him.

Blue and Papyrus, doubled up and panting.

Nightmare. As still and quiet, almost, as anyone else here.

“Hey, Ink.” Error. Kneeling, with Dream in his arms.

“Yeah.” This is normal.

Error huffs. Gives him a terrifying look. “Catch.”

Fresh isn’t exactly solid. He sort of splatters, when he hits Ink’s hands, a purple gob of claws and teeth and fear, that gathers and latches around his fingers. Ink wants to scream, to hurl him back but Error is already gone, vanished, with only a quick glance at Nightmare before he does.

More howling. And Ink, alone in a crowded street with Fresh in his hands.

For a moment they blink at each other.

Then Ink crams him in his eye socket.


	26. Chapter 26

The familiar blink of a shortcut. Crimson fabric, bunched up within fingers strangely numb, like the threads between body and soul have been frayed and worn to the point of near snapping.

Dream takes a breath. With great effort, and a delay between thought and action that would be alarming if he could be alarmed, he manages to lift his aching head. Just a fraction. Enough to catch a glimpse of Error’s face, and a piece of recognizable ceiling.

He’s home.

He’s trembling, and not him but the arms that clutch him, tightly, against Error’s crimson shirt. The destroyer is trembling, just standing and trembling, in the Swap brothers’ living room. That alone would be astounding enough, even if it wasn’t Dream he was holding, even if he wasn’t holding anyone at all, and likely suffering a great deal for it.

It takes a long time for the words, formed in his mind, to find their way to his throat and out his mouth. When they do his voice comes scratchy and hoarse, like he hasn’t used it in years, and maybe he hasn’t.

“Am I… hurting you?”

Error seems to come to himself then, glancing down at his little charge with something like a disbelieving huff. “Not as much as they’d h-hurt me if I dropped you, kid.” But he moves then, stepping across the room to set him, upright, on the sofa. Dream’s hands fall somewhere on the cushions to either side, and Error makes that slightly amused, disapproving sound again, reaching out to remove glasses Dream didn’t know he had on. All at once the room is painfully bright.

“Easy now,” says Error, prodding with surprising gentleness at the raw puffiness beneath Dream’s right eye. It still hurts. “Gonna have to g-get used to it. Hurting people. When you get close,” he mutters, almost absentmindedly, and sucks in a breath at whatever he sees. “God… shit. I wish he wouldn’t d-do that. How’s the eye-light, though? Knock, knock. Still there? Oh - there it is. G-Good.”

Dream just watches while he talks to himself. This isn’t the first time he’s seen Error act this way, now. There’s a whole lot of Fresh’s memories left, in his head.

“He… loves you a lot.” The words are out before Dream thinks of them, this time.

“Yeah?” Error doesn’t seem to be paying much attention. He’s checking for other injuries. “Well I g-got kind of soft spot for him too, kid. But you know…”

Error, in your face. Error, with the tears and the strings sticking to his fingers where he tries to wipe them away, where he tries to claw at his own face in agony. When he tells you to go, and you never come back.

“He doesn’t care about that.” Again, words Dream doesn’t have to think about. “He knows he deserved it.”

Error rocks back on his heels. Studies Dream for a long moment. “Deserved it, huh?” he says finally. “And wh-what do you deserve, Dream?”

His mouth opens. Clamps shut. This isn’t about him. Was never about him. He was just doing his job. And not. And now he’s doing it again. The tears make tracks in the dust and grime on his face.

Oh god, the dust.

Error tsks. Glances over at nothing. Gets up. Comes back, with something Dream doesn’t deserve to wear.

“Here, t-take that off.”

He doesn’t know how. In the end Error has to pull him to his feet and help him out of it - a gray, multicolored jacket he didn’t know he had on.

He’s cold. And then the old cape is back around his shoulders.

“This is really cool. You sh-shouldn’t lose this.”

Error and his appreciation for simple, long-lasting attire. Dream holds still while he does the clasp.

“You got people who c-care about you too, kid,” Error tells him, surveying his work. “M-maybe more than you deserve. But… s-sometimes I think… we hate ourselves more than we love each other, you know what I’m saying?”

The slam of a screen door. Blue, charging in. Balled, shaking fists and wild eyes. Looking about ready to kill.

And it does hurt a bit, when Blue grabs him. Just like Error said.

“Don’t you dare…” Blue hisses, sounding nothing and everything like himself. A shuddering breath. “Don’t you f-fucking dare tell me you’re sorry.”

Dream doesn’t.


	27. Chapter 27

Nightmare is sitting on the curb. He is in no hurry to get home.

Dream has seen enough negativity for one day.

Besides, Blue took off pretty quick, before even the dogs got here. Blue will take care of it. He always does.

Ink was on his knees, when the dogs came. Several of them, from all different timelines. And then some other versions of Sans and Papyrus. A Gaster or two. Plenty of Undynes. All guards or maybe officials. Ink was holding his eye like he’d been hit, when they asked him who it was.

A beat of silence. Then - “Error,” he said, in a tone like a recording. And raised his voice a little, over the uneasy stirrings of the onlookers, the growling from the dogs. “We were fighting, and I… He grabbed hold of me, and - It was my fault.” It was stilted, even by Ink’s standards. Even the stammering sounded like something from a bad soap opera.

The others didn’t seem to notice anything amiss, though. Only that one human child, the one without color. Nightmare didn’t see him at first. He stands at the fringes of the crowd. Quiet, and expressionless. Once, Ink’s eyes flick over to meet his gaze, and Nightmare gets a strange, secondhand shiver down his spine.

There’s some debate as to why Error would do this now. “I thought you were getting along again,” one Undyne growls at him lowly, and Ink just shakes his head. Fresh was something like a year long diversion, it’s decided. And wouldn’t it be just natural, if he disappeared now too. After all, weren’t they friends, before? The destroyer, and his pet parasite.

Papyrus, surprisingly, says nothing to contradict Ink’s story. Only glares, piercingly, in Ink’s direction for several moments before going off with the others to make his report.

After all, it only makes sense. If Fresh was here, they’d start looking for him. In everyone’s head. And where would he go, then? Nightmare can’t help but wonder if they didn’t plan this from the beginning. Ink, and Error.

“Are you ok?” Ink. Looking very confused and one hand still up over his eye. And why shouldn’t he be. Confused. After all, Nightmare didn’t get up. Didn’t even start to go back.

“I think we both know the answer to that question.” Nightmare looks him in the eye. “You can go.”

The others are starting to disperse now. A few are staying, to clean up the mess. Everyone here is very protective, of Omega. They don’t have anywhere else.

The monochrome child is gone.

Nightmare stays for most of the day. Until it’s mostly empty, and the sun isn’t setting but it would if there was one.

Then he turns his head.

It’s not the first time today, that he’s done it. But it is the first time he’s looked. Off to the left, with his right eye.

He sits there on the curb, in an indolent, slouching rendition of Nightmare’s posture with his knees drawn up. Pulling up grass and twining it around his fingers. He doesn’t look much older. Or at least, Nightmare doesn’t think so. Then again, perhaps he doesn’t either. He glances down at his own sludge-stained clothes, at the several inches of bared wrist and ankle sticking out of them.

Error won’t be able to replace these.

Sludge hasn’t got a hood or a cape. That mess of inky tentacles spills freely down his back and around his shoulders, and his clothing looks much the same as it did before. He doesn’t turn, only hums softly to himself as he torments the gray plant life, and when he speaks there’s just a trace of that old, half-moon grin. “You’ve changed.”

“You haven’t.” Cracked. Dry.

Sludge looks at him. Straightens up a bit. Turns out they’re still the same height. He tilts his head a little, and there’s something in that smile that’s like a knife twisting in Nightmare’s chest. “What are you doing.”

It isn’t a greeting, or a nicety. And it’s so far removed from what Nightmare imagined, from what he used to daydream this moment would be that he’s starting to believe it.

“Sludge - ”

“No.” Sludge rubs at his forehead like it hurts to think. “Why… Why am I here, Night?”

“Sludge, I’m sorry.” It’s not at all like he planned. _He’s_ not at all like he planned, stunned and feeling nothing. “You’re - I - didn’t mean…” He didn’t. He didn’t but he’d probably do it again and that’s the problem.

Sludge groans into his hands before he peels them off his face. “Well,” he says. “Least you’re not all…”

He doesn’t need to finish.

Because no, Nightmare isn’t goopy, he isn’t all slimy with eight tentacles, only those inky tracks down his cheeks give him away and already they are fading. Already _this_ is fading, and there’s so many things he wants to say, that he planned to say only he can’t, he can’t think of any of them now and so he doesn’t.

He rests his head on his knees, still turned to face the other, to face himself. “Will you come back,” he whispers.

Sigh.

“No, I know,” Nightmare all but snaps. “I know all that and I won’t…” kick and scream. And tell you I hate you. “Only… If you came back once, and I get like this again… wouldn’t that mean - ”

“I’m sorry about Dream,” Sludge tells him soberly. “Guess I figured… you’d have it all sorted by now.”

He should. He should and he will, or die trying.

“Sludge.” And his voice is steadier.

“Yeah.”

“Let’s not talk about that, or… how long.”

“Ok.”

“Do you wanna walk? I haven’t got a chessboard, anymore.”

Sludge huffs a laugh, and gets to his feet without a sound. “That’s ok. I don’t really feel like playing anyway.”


	28. Chapter 28

Fresh is curled in some far corner of Ink’s mind. Whenever Ink thinks of him, or rather thinks _at_ him he only curls tighter, effectually shutting him out.

Ink doesn’t feel like teleporting. So he walks, the full length of the street back the Swap brothers’ house. He’s not really sure why he doesn’t just leave. Only that it will be just them if he does, and he’s not sure either of them are quite ready for that, again.

Ink has never been one to waste words. He’s never really sure that what comes out of his mouth is quite normal, or even genuine and so he keeps quiet, unless he knows.

He knows now. Though perhaps he’s not quite sure about the normal part.

“Thought about what you said.” He speaks aloud, to be sure Fresh can hear him. Besides, there’s nobody else within earshot. “And the reason… the reason I can’t just _make more,_ as you put it, is because every world is unique. Just like every color has a different flavor. They’re all different, the creators. And so their worlds… no two are ever quite the same. Just like no two Sanses are the same.”

The sound of his steps, on the pavement.

“So when I lose - ” His voice breaks in his throat and he clears it. “Well. Anyway. You’re not an AU. And you’re not even a Sans.” Suddenly, he can’t fight the urge to laugh. “But you know… Looking at the rest of us, maybe you’re the lucky one.”

His hand is on the doorknob. He doesn’t turn it. Only waits, for a moment. In the silence.

Then he goes in.

Papyrus is back. And sitting with Error, at the dining room table. Coffee. Ink stares blankly, hands at his sides. One look at him and Papyrus starts up. “Hey, he better not come crawling out your eye and hurt somebody.”

Ink is strangely defensive. “Relax. He’s not gonna do anything.”

Slowly, Papyrus eases back down.

Ink turns to Error. A silent question.

“He’s in th-there with Blue. Noot come with you?” A glance toward the door.

“No.” Ink isn’t sure what to do with himself. With Fresh. His hand wanders to his eye.

“He wants to see you,” says Papyrus mercifully, and Ink gapes at him.

“Really?” he breathes. And relief.

Blue is fussing when he walks in. Tucking Dream into his bunk like a mother hen. There’s a half melted bag of ice sitting in a bucket by the bed.

Right. His eye.

Fresh has a nasty way of not bothering where he puts his claws. Especially when he’s looking out. Ink thinks maybe he does it on purpose.

It’s not just his eye, though. Even Ink knows that. Though what exact affect Fresh might’ve had on Dream’s soul specifically is lost on him.

Nightmare would know. If Nightmare was here.

Blue makes way for Ink when he approaches, and picks up the bucket. “I’ll get more ice,” and leaves.

There’s a chair, beside the bed. Ink sits down.

Dream watches him. Then, with no little difficulty, disentangles one hand from the blanket. Holds it out.

Ink takes it.

There’s nothing, really, to say. Nothing Dream doesn’t know already. Nothing Ink doesn’t know already.

Dream dozes off, like that.

Ink’s eyes sting. Both of them.

He tries not to blink.


	29. Chapter 29

When Dream awakens, some time in the small hours of the morning when most people should be asleep, Ink is gone. There’s a soft light flickering under the door, and even softer voices reverberating through it. He all but flops out of bed, and they fall silent suddenly when his knees buckle on the hardwood floor. But much to his relief, nobody comes.

He gets to the door on shaky legs and opens it. There’s a fire in the hearth and Papyrus is there with Ink and Error, who still haven’t left, and all are turned to look at him. Dream is just barely taller than Papyrus seated, and when he goes to him at the side of his chair Papyrus puts one lanky arm around him and Dream feels sorry for himself, just for a moment while he buries his face in that orange hoodie.

“Had a rough day, huh?”

Dream doesn’t need to answer. He’s suddenly self conscious.

“How you feeling?”

Dream isn’t sure. His voice doesn’t want to come again. “Light,” he says finally.

“N-Not as much soul. Should repair itself though.” Error is knitting, badly, with his own strings. Seems more like a pastime than anything else. And how much time is he trying to pass, anyway?

Papyrus shakes his head. “That’s not what I’m worried about. Dream isn’t supposed to process the negative stuff from other people. It’s toxic to him.”

Ink frowns, then scoots over a little on the couch. Dream goes and sits between him and Error, being careful not to get to close to the latter in the process, and rests his head on Ink’s shoulder.

They’re quiet for a while, listening to the crackling of the fire. And in the air a heavy absence.

It’s Dream that eventually breaks the silence. “Ink.”

“Yes.”

“Have you got Fresh in your eye-socket.”

“…Yes.”

Dream sits up, squinting a little at his face. “Can he hear us?”

Ink thinks. “Probably.”

Dream flops his head back down again. “Wonder why he doesn’t say.”

Silence. Then - “P-Probably figures he’s said enough, today.” Error doesn’t even break his concentration.

Ink shoots him a look. Dream giggles, and Papyrus looks like he might if he wasn’t so worried.

“Who wants hot chocolate?” Blue is poking his head through the door from the kitchen.

“Me,” comes the chorus a voices, and Blue grins before ducking back in.

He’s got a tray and everything. And six steaming cups.

Papyrus clears his throat. “Uhm, Blue…”

“Hm?” He looks up from where he’s handing them out from the coffee table like Santa at Christmas.

“Nightmare isn’t back yet. Might wanna save that for him in the kitchen, though.”

“Oh, no, it isn’t for Nightmare. I mean, I’ll make him some, when he gets back.” Blue looks over in Ink’s direction almost expectantly. “Come on, it’s alright.”

Ink tenses, looking about ready to sink down into the floor. He’s already got his cup.

There’s a long beat of awkward silence before Ink mutters, “Well go on,” and a couple of cautious claws peek out around the edges of his eye. And then another, and another. And a whole gob of purple ooze plops down into Blue’s outstretched hand.

“There you go,” he says, like it’s the most natural thing in the world, and takes him in the kitchen with the last two mugs on the tray. 

Dream sips his drink. Papyrus is pinching his nasal bone and making a show of breathing steadily. Ink shifts in his seat, suddenly restless, and starts to get up. “Uhm,” he says, “I forgot my scarf. Can I go - ”

“No.” Error doesn’t even look up from his mug.

Ink slouches back forlornly and rubs at his eye again. “Ok.” And makes the most of his hot chocolate.

Papyrus gets up and goes in the kitchen. His voice comes sharp but not loud, not enough to make out the words anyway. And Blue’s, in a familiar, pleading tone. Something bangs onto the kitchen table and Ink jumps about a foot in the air. Dream reaches out a steadying hand to his arm, and Error shakes with silent laughter. Papyrus comes back out and they all three snap to attention as he passes. Headed for the front door, and a cigarette halfway up to his mouth.

He slams it, hard, and Dream relaxes again. He’s too tired right now, to worry about it. Or anything.

“So what are you making,” he asks Error instead, and the destroyer busts out laughing, doing his best to muffle it, and the tears come streaming out his eyes.

Ink is glaring in the direction of the wall.

“Oh god,” Error gasps at last, and drains his mug. “These god damn kids I swear.”


	30. Chapter 30

Dream goes to bed again, and Error decides they won’t leave until Nightmare gets back. Then he goes in the kitchen, leaving Ink alone on the couch.

Blue has Fresh on the table with his mug, and all sort of wrapped around it for warmth, not a drop of it gone. Blue doesn’t seem to mind though, only sits there across from him and gestures with his spoon while he talks. He doesn’t look directly at Fresh unless he speaks, which is rare since he has no real face to hide behind, now. Makes up for it when he does though. Error remembers coaxing him into conversation back in the antivoid, all that time ago. And now Fresh’s eye follows him over to the stove, where he ladles out another mug for himself.

Hey, it’s good hot chocolate.

“So it doesn’t matter that you can’t go home ‘cause nobody here can either, we’re all sort of making this our home in a way, and doing whatever we decide for ourselves to do,” Blue is saying matter-of-factly, and like this is perfectly normal. “There are a lot of other Sanses, and there was even another Blue, but only one me. So you don’t have to worry, about being like them.”

Fresh is watching his whipped cream melt. His one eye forms a greenish swirl and Error grins, leaning back against the counter and sipping his drink. Fresh knows all about the other Blue. But he’s kinda like Ink, sometimes, he doesn’t say.

Just then the kitchen door swings open, and Ink pokes his head in. “Uhm…” He looks nervously at Error. “I think… he’s back.”

Maybe Ink is just telling him so that they can go home. Either way, Error shrugs at the others and heads back out. The front door is still ajar where Ink left it, but Nightmare hasn’t come in. He sort of hangs in the doorway, with a slight, half-smile Error can’t quite read. He looks beat, with bags beneath his eyes and muddy tear stains tracing down his cheeks. There’s something helpless in the the way his arms dangle at his sides that reminds him of Ink.

“Where the fuck have you been?” the destroyer asks with no real hostility, and something breaks in Nightmare’s face, something Error didn’t know was there, and he sort of tips when Error gets close enough to catch him.

Great. The one person who never tries to hug him.

Ink comes over and watches. “Dream hasn’t asked for you,” he says helpfully, and Error glares at him.

“I know.” The words are muffled. Nightmare steps back. “I wouldn’t ask for me either.”

“Yeah? Well you can f-fix your attitude before you go in and see him then.”

And something about that must be funny because Nightmare starts laughing, almost a little hysterically. “There’s hot chocolate?” he asks suddenly, and Error scowls.

“Maybe.”

Nightmare goes to get some. Finds Blue in the kitchen. They stare at each other for a long moment.

Then - “Guess I used up my insult for the month, huh?”

“Yeah.” Blue doesn’t even blink.

Pause. “…Can… I still have hot chocolate?”

“Yeah.” There are two mugs on the table.

Nightmare sighs and gets his own. Sits down wearily and scoots the other one, the full one to the side. “You scared me today,” he says conversationally. “All those attacks. Didn’t know you could fight like that.” He didn’t know a lot of things about Blue, before this week.

A spark, of something like pride. “Then I guess you wouldn’t argue anymore, if I tried to go with you. Like you said I could.”

“Blue.” Nightmare sighs and rests his head wearily on the table. “The world doesn’t deserve you.”

Beat. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

“You need to sleep?”

“Probably.” Nightmare sits up. “In a minute.” He plays with his spoon. “So… what’s been going on?”

“Oh, nothing. Dream got up once but now he’s back asleep, and Ink and Error are pretending to watch us since Papy left.”

“Where’d he go?”

“Oh he’s pouting ‘cause of Fresh, even though I told him it’s fine.”

“Fresh?”

“Yeah.” Something moves, behind his eye. “I can fight even better now. And he didn’t have anyplace to go, so…” A couple of claws, scratching at the edges of his eye-socket. He winces. “Ouch, geez.” The claws disappear and Blue rubs at his eye. “There we go. You’ll learn.”

Nightmare doesn’t trust himself to speak.

“So, yeah, Papy didn’t like it, obviously, but even he knows my soul is strong! And there’s a lot of myths associated with parasites, you know, only he isn’t even a parasite ‘cause he doesn’t use it up unless he takes control, and don’t you know how useful it will be, to have him while I’m in the guard? You saw how he fought, and he can teleport, too, anywhere he wants. I won’t even have to wait for you to take me.”

“Sounds like you’ve put a lot of thought into it,” Nightmare observes acidly and Blue grins.

“So you’ll have my back, when Papy comes back?”

“Do you need me to?”

Blue thinks. “No. But it’d be nice.”

“Well Blue,” Nightmare rubs his own eyes. “Nobody can say you’re all talk.”

Blue shrugs. “I do talk a lot though.”

“Yeah. Well. That’s okay.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m gonna go to bed.”

“Okay. See you tomorrow.

“Yep.”


	31. Chapter 31

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Double update!

It’s the first time Dream’s been outside in a week. He’s out like a light, most of the time, and doesn’t even need to pretend.

It’s been years since he slept like that. And Nightmare knows it means nothing good, but he can’t help feeling a little glad about it. Even if it means they hardly ever talk, at least it doesn’t seem like Dream is actively avoiding him.

Dream isn’t actively doing anything. And it’s a nice change.

Nightmare comes out and sits beside him on the front step and takes it as a good sign when Dream doesn’t get up. Still, he doesn’t sit close. There’s none of the turmoil from before, the unsaturated negativity and hatred from a week ago. But, strangely, the guilt is gone, too.

Dream’s expression is cold, and a little scary. He’s got a clipboard and a whole lot of colored pencils. Probably got them from Ink at some point - Blue doesn’t draw, anymore, and Ink has been visiting very nearly every day. It’s strange to see Dream sitting idly, passing the time with such a relaxed pursuit. He has never been a very good artist, and Nightmare is a little surprised even now, to see him with any color other than yellow in his hand. Black, and purple. Lots of purple. And sometimes red, or blue. Nightmare tries not to peek. At one point the purple rolls over toward him when Dream sets it down, and Nightmare catches it. Puts it back with the rest of the pile.

“Thank you.” More unwonted, more abrupt than a slap in the face. And he doesn’t turn.

It occurs to Nightmare those are the first words Dream has spoken directly to him since he got back. He hasn’t even apologized. Must be some kind of record.

“Do you want to read.”

Nightmare looks up, startled. Nightmare always used to read while Dream drew. Blue got them back into it, last year. The reading, not the drawing. Still -

“Do you want me to?”

“Yes. Please.” A tremor, in his hands.

Nightmare gets up to find a book. When they were little, he would always choose something complex, and full of themes he took great pride in pretending to understand. Dream never did, but he always listened. And even after, when Nightmare ranted about what it _meant_ \- he listened to that, too.

Nightmare doesn’t grab something like that. There’s a little story he keeps under his mattress, that Blue let him have some months ago. About a princess, who is cursed to weigh nothing, and laugh at everything. He isn’t sure why he likes it, or why he chooses it now. Only that it’s nothing like what he read before, and maybe Dream will get it, too.

He seems to. Doesn’t stop him once, and by the end he’s not drawing anymore, only watching Nightmare while he narrates - how she came to love, to cry for the first time. “Where’d you get that book,” he says at last, when Nightmare closes it.

“Blue.”

“Blue.” Dream shifts. He’s got his knees drawn up and that clipboard clutched to his chest. There are a lot of pages. “He’s so sweet.”

That’s not exactly the word Nightmare would use for Blue, but he doesn’t argue. “Fresh has been practicing with him, every day,” he observes carefully. “Think he knows how lucky he is?”

“You think he’s lucky?” Dream watches the sky. “He’s been driven out no matter where he goes. He’s probably still waiting, for it to happen again.”

Nightmare rubs at his eyes. “Dream, he’s a parasite.”

“I’m a parasite.”

Nightmare tenses. Sits up straighter. “What.” But Dream isn’t at the edge of tears, doesn’t even seem mildly disturbed.

“Error said… we all hurt each other. So…”

“That’s a far cry from being a parasite.”

“No, I just…” Dream sighs, and for the first time Nightmare realizes how it must have felt, when he explained those books to Dream. “I’ve been drawing,” he says finally, and Nightmare smiles a little.

“I noticed.”

Dream sits up too, and lets the clipboard down onto his lap. Lifts up the bottom page, and lets the colors flip by.

They’re pretty ugly drawings, most of them. One of Error looking furious, and a truly petrifying depiction of Ink with death in his eyes. Various humans and monsters that Nightmare doesn’t recognize. Blood, and dust. Nightmare still in purple, with a lumpy face, with cuts and bruises all down his arms. And Sludge. Many of Sludge. Cruel eyes. Wicked fangs. Hollowed eyes, and his life force pealing off him.

“You’ve been thinking,” Nightmare says softly, and Dream nods.

“All the things I see in my head. Some are his and some are mine. Or… both. And when I see them out like this… they’re not… they’re not that different, Night.”

Nightmare bites his tongue. Reserves judgement. Takes the drawings from him and looks, more closely. “Ok,” he says finally. “So?”

“So, I… want to stop… hating myself.”

Nightmare sets the clipboard down. Pulls Dream against his shoulder and holds him, like he’s wanted to all week. Closes his eyes, and tries to breathe around the lump in his throat. “You know, when I… When Sludge left the first time, I was really angry. I knew what he was gonna do before he did it. I tried everything, to stop it. And when I couldn’t, I just… yelled at him. Told him I hated him. Convinced myself I was glad, that he was going.”

Dream sniffs.

“And… I know you think I wish it would’ve turned out different.”

“Don’t, Night.” Dream’s voice is husky. “Don’t tell me it was all an act. You were laughing. It was _you._ ”

“It was me,” Night says simply. Most things are simple, when you really think about them. “And he got so mad, when I lied about that.”

Dream is quiet.

“I’d blame it on him, whatever I could. I’d tell him I didn’t want any of those things, that he did. When they were my emotions he used, to do them.” Nightmare laughs. “Think he figured I’d be more whole, by now.”

Dream doesn’t share his amusement. “And you want him to come back.”

“And I want him to come back.” Nightmare rests his head on top of his brother’s. “It’s really selfish, and sounds awful. But at this point I don’t care what he did, to me or to anybody. Wish he was doing it all over again, if it meant I could see him.”

There’s a long stretch of silence, in which Nightmare thinks and feels nothing in particular. Because whatever he might’ve said, whatever he might want now he’s not bringing Sludge back again. He’s not doing that anymore, to himself, or to Dream.

“Night, don’t… don’t you know that’s what I think about you?”

It’s like being punched in the gut. Foreign hope, and a sudden urgency because this moment is passing, it’s passing and never going to come again.

“Dream, let’s not…” he starts before he knows what he’s going to say. “We were never really friends, until the end. Sludge and me. I don’t want it to be like that. With you.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” The response is all the calm, all the confidence Nightmare doesn’t feel. “We can’t, either one of us. People still need to laugh, and cry. And - ” He stops. Wipes at his eyes. “Maybe if we’d worked together from the beginning, none of this would’ve happened.”

None of this. “Then… Are you sorry."

He hears rather than sees, Dream’s smile. “No. Didn’t you listen to what I just said?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The story is "The Light Princess" by George MacDonald.


	32. Chapter 32

Ink stopped creating again. Error would be worried, if it weren’t for Ink’s frequent visits to Omega. He’s practically obsessed, but not enough to make any actual progress when he goes. He expects Fresh to seek him out, to make the first move and fix everything when that’s decidedly not Fresh’s job at this point. Error hoped he’d figure it out on his own, but he’s running out of paints and they provide him with little enough sense as it is. Which is why Error is waiting for him in the Doodle Sphere when he gets back one day.

“Talk to him,” he says when he arrives, and Ink just freezes. Error sighs. He might as well have said, “Hands up.”

“Fresh,” he adds. “Quit p-pretending to visit Dream and talk to him if that’s what you want. And it c-clearly is.”

Ink just stands there with his hands at his sides. Turns his head, so he doesn’t have to look at him. “He won’t talk to me.”

“How do you know?”

“He shut me out,” he snaps, and sits down in the grass. “He shut me out of his head after the fight.”

Error tsks.“I told you to talk to him not think at him. C-Can’t expect him to share his whole mind with you at this stage.”

Ink decides he has a point. That he doesn’t really want Fresh in his mind anymore, either, that sharing their unfiltered thoughts only ever amounted to a whole lot of misunderstandings. So he goes back, right away, and finds Blue in the kitchen making dinner. Fresh isn’t in his mind, either. He’s on the table, shuffling through some recipe cards. Silent, more silent now than he ever was before, without a host.

He’s been a through a lot.

He doesn’t react, to Ink’s presence. He’s hasn’t acknowledged Ink once since the incident, and it’s starting to bug him. Well, Ink isn’t going through some third party. It’s been a while, sure, but only because he thought Fresh was gone and if he’d known Fresh was out there he’d have found him sooner, he’d have found him and got rid of him himself before he did all this damage, before he escaped with Ink’s secrets and destroyed all his friendships and… and…

“Can I talk to you… before I leave.”

Fresh looks at Blue. Blue doesn’t turn. They both know who he’s talking to.

Still, Blue is the one who responds first. “Thought you already left,” he says briskly and flips on a burner.

Ink is irritated. “I came back,” he supplies shortly, and Fresh sets the recipe cards down. Shifts, awkwardly, toward the far edge of the table. He’s always uncomfortable, without a host. But not usually in front of Ink.

It takes him a moment to remember they don’t have a _usually_ anymore.

“Do you want to?” Blue. He still hasn’t turned, from the stove.

Fresh opens his mouth. An oblong shape, with a lot of teeth. Closes it.

“Think you’ll feel better,” says Blue confidently, and goes for the fridge, effectively turning his back on the whole situation, and, finally, Fresh looks at him.

“I’m gonna be busier,” Ink says stupidly. “So I thought, before I go…”

A bit of red, in his eye. And Fresh slowly flops over to him, across the table. He stops at the end, and looks up, hesitant, till Ink gingerly picks him up. Fresh latches onto his scarf like a koala bear, and they go.

Ink doesn’t take him far. Out in the front yard, a little ways. In full view of the house. “Wish there’d been an Omega, when I made you,” he says oddly, and wonders what he meant by it.

When I made you.

There’s a strange expression on Fresh’s semblance of a face, but Ink has forgotten, how to read him.

“I was so worried, about messing things up.” Like I messed you up. “Maybe you’d have been happier, with other people.”

But Fresh didn’t want to be happier, with other people. And Ink knows that. He’s only burying himself deeper. Error and his stupid ideas.

“What I mean is - I mean that I’m - that I’m glad, you’re maybe… happy now.”

He’s never been very good with words. And Fresh wouldn't let him think at him. This is Fresh’s fault, really.

“Are you trying to tell me you forgive me.” Fresh’s voice without a host. And almost sarcastic.

Ink isn’t sure what to make of it. The question, or his tone.

“Do you want me to?” he asks instead.

“Well, I don’t forgive you. So.”

It’s rare, when Ink’s own amusement flickers to his face before he can stop it, before he can process and decide, if that’s how he feels. “That’s ok. I’m a little tired of that stuff, too.”

Fresh is shivering. Or maybe just shaking. It’s not like it’s cold here.

Well. Ink has plenty of scarf, at least.

He reaches for the long end and tugs it forward, so that it drapes mostly over his little companion, and Fresh closes his one eye. Buries it, against his shoulder.

Ink studies him. The murky purple color of his head. Those little talons, embedded in the fabric.

Ink loves him.

But he’s not a person, the way Fresh is. He can’t feel, the way Fresh does. He would, if he could. Does that count?

He rests his hand over the scarf. Over Fresh, who’s no bigger, really, than his hand and still manages to surprise him. And if this is as close as they’re going to get, to what they were before, Ink is ok with that. He’ll be useful, with Blue. Which is something Ink never quite allowed him to be. “It’s just like you said, huh?” he whispers. “Little symbiont.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading. I want to write a part 4 someday soon, but college is starting up again for me this week! Hopefully I’ll write more over Christmas break ^-^

**Author's Note:**

> There is now another sequel to this series, so be sure to check it out!


End file.
